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I cheerfully commend the "Baking Preparations " of Professor Horsford to the 
Housekeepers of America. They deserve as honorable a place in the store-room and 
kitchen as does his Acid Phosphate in the family medicine-chest. 

Marion Harland 




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HOUSEKEEPEES' LIBEAET. 

Each volume i6mo, cloth, $i.oo. 
Domestic Problems. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. 
Twenty-Six Hours a Day. By Mary Blake. 
Anna Maria's Housekeeping. By Mrs. S. D. Power. 
Cookery for Beginners. By Marion Harland. 
*#* Will be sent postpaid on receipt of price by 
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¥ 



ANNA MARIA'S HOUSE- 
KEEPING 



■w, BY y^, a"~^. 
Mks. S;>fD:>' power 
Author of " Children's Etiquette," " Ugly Girl Papers," etc 





BOSTON 
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY 

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 



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Copyright by 

D. LOTHKOP AND COMPANY 

1884 



^^^^ " Our constant aim is to make them the Finest in the World. 



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OUR CONSTANT AIM IS TO MAKE THEM THE FINEST IN THE WORLD. 



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CONTENTS. 



I. — How to make Housework easier 
II. — The Night beforehand . 

III. — A good Breakfast . 

IV. — A Lady's Account Books 
v. — A Bill of Waste 

VL— Two Teakettles 
VII. — A comfortable Kitchen . 
VIII. — To clean anc^ to keep clean 
IX. — In my Lady's Chamber . 

X. — Summer Comfort . 
XI. — Blue Mondays . 
XII. — Starching and Ironing . 

XIII. •— Over the Mending-Basket 

XIV. — Food and Drink . 
XV. — A Screw loose. 

XVI. — When Company comes . 
XVII. — Making the best of Things 
XVIIL — Shopping 
XIX. — Sickness in the House . 
XX. — In the Storeroom . 
XXI. — Planning and Packing . 
XXII. — A Dress Rehearsal. 
XXIIL — Church Picnics 
XXIV. — Helps that are Helps 



Page. 
7 

22 
36 

49 
64 
77 

88 

99 

115 
130 

145 

160 

175 
190 
207 
218 

235 
249 

264 

280 

293 
307 
322 

335 



ANNA MARIA'S HOUSE- 
KEEPING. 



L — HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. 

ANNA MARIA said the other day she would 
like to know if there really was any way of 
making housekeeping e-asier, short of shirking it 
altogether. If there was any improvement she 
thought people couldn't know it any too soon. She 
read all the plans for making work lighter, but for 
them you must build a new apartment-house, with 
steam heat and pneumatic tubes to send groceries 
home and shoot the dinner up from the great central 
bake-house and kitchen, which was to be somewhere 
in the same square. She wondered if the meals 
wouldn't get cold on the way, and how you'd ever 
make cake light if you had to send it six or eight 

7 



8 ANNA MARIANS HOUSEKEEPING. 

doors off before you could put it in the oven. She 
wasn't just at liberty to join cooperative schemes, and 
if she was she didn't know how somebody else's way 
of housekeeping would suit hers. She distinctly 
belonged to the common sort, who don't keep a man 
and a maid, but do everything '* menial" for them- 
selves, who don't drink tea from Japanese teacups, or 
eat dessert on painted china, who use red and white 
tablecloths for breakfast and lunch, and glass goblets 
at a dollar a dozen, but who like nice order and 
dainty housekeeping as well as people who have lace 
tea-cloths and cloissonne or Minton ware. She never 
even belonged to a "family" to speak of — her grand- 
father wasn't a judge nor a bishop, nor even a wholesale 
grocer; she thought it was a very great neglect on 
the part of her father and mother not to provide 
their children with distinguished ancestors and heir- 
loom china and silver coffeepots — but it couldn't be 
helped. They had only been hard-working, honest, 
respectable folks, who lived in a rented house and 
had baked beans every Sunday and salt-fish twice a 
week. That was their standard of elegance. All the 
same Anna Maria thought she enjoyed reading 



HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. 9 

Longfellow and Miss Caroline Fox's journal, and 
making macrame toilet sets, and planting rose- 
cuttings and carnations in the clematis border, possi- 
bly not as well as if she came of an old family, but 
just as well as she could, being herself. She didn't 
know how she could be happier than she was, if only 
the housework didn't take up so much time from 
reading and rose-planting and rose-knitting. She and 
* her mother couldn't do like the ladies in stories, who 
lived alone in a cottage or in lodgings, and went 
around dusting things with the tips of their fingers; 
who breakfasted on an egg and slip of toast, and 
washed the china on the mahogany table, and left 
everything else to the convenient charwoman who 
comes in every day to do all the rest of the work. It 
must be rather expensive, if she charged a dollar and 
a half a day, like Mrs. Mulvany who went out to 
day's work in their neighborhood. Anna Maria 
always had a woman to wash and scrub, but that 
woman was herself. She didn't mind the work, but 
she hated taking so much time paring potatoes and 
making cookies, and cleaning out the sink and clear- 
ing the table three times a day, when there were so 



lo ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



many pleasant things to be done in the world. 
And she hated having her hands red and rough, so 
that they caught the silk of her embroidery, and 
shamed the white pages of her diary when she wrote 
in it. 

Anna Maria is our neighbor's daughter, a nice girl 
with shrewd, sensible ways, who goes to the High 
School, and stands well in the Latin class, and is 
specially good, her teacher says, in Political Economy* 
and Rhetoric. She helps her mother, does much of 
the sewing, and has the finest cinerarias and cycla- 
men abloom in her windows this February of any- 
body in town. As Darius Perkins says, a// her sense 
don't run to seed in books. She knows plenty about 
things, as well as other people's ideas about them. 

Anna Maria is rather a favorite with me, and I wish 
we could find some way to help her. She doesn't 
want a hired girl — the last one they had turned up 
her nose because the family hadn't a velvet carpet or 
a plated silver tea-set, and weren't, as she phrased it, 
** highly connected." When she left it took Anna 
Maria and her mother a straight week of house- 
cleaning to get things in order, the closets sweet and 



HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. II 

the paint bright, and they never will get the grease- 
spot out of the wall where she hung the hams against 
the wall-paper. Anna Maria says the whole house 
smelled of hired girl while she was in it, and you 
could not open the front door without a draft of beans 
or onions, fried cakes or burnt something rushing at 
you. Between the two crosses she would rather 
endure the work than the help, but need it take all 
one's time just to feed and clean and feed again? 
That is what she would like to know. 

Dear Anna Maria, it need not. There are hosts of 
helps nowadays — help that don't have unpleasant 
habits, that don't sing " Pinafore " and the " Sweet 
By and By " at the top of their voice from cellar to 
roof-tree, or smell of burnt fat, or wipe the bread 
knife on their aprons. If you spent about a quarter 
of what a girl's wages would amount to for a year in 
these helps, you would find, I think, that cooking and 
cleaning needn't take all your time. When a car- 
penter wants to do good work, and fast work, he 
looks out to have the best tools in the best order, and 
the first thing you want is to have your tools, good, 
bad or indifferent, in the best order they will allow. 



12 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



The greatest help I know of in housekeeping is a 
sharp knife. It saves time paring vegetables and 
cutting meat or bread. So Anna Maria wants to get 
her father to sharpen the carving knife and the 
kitchen knife and the little paring knife, and she 
wants an oil-stone to keep them sharp. A kitchen 
grindstone which sits on a table and turns in a jap- 
anned iron trough, is a very great help, and it only 
costs a dollar and lasts a generation. 

Then, Anna Maria, you want a very solid meat- 
block on three legs, that will stand pounding, hacking 
and sawing, on which you can trim your joints of 
meat, crack bones for soup, chop hash — or no; for 
that you want a small sausage grinder. No dishes 
are nicer than those of meat or vegetables divided 
very finely, for the flavor spreads, and the fibre 
cooks better, and the food is easier of digestion than 
in solid form. 

Broad saucepans and frying pans are best for 
cooking quickly. To fry potatoes or hominy or cakes 
for breakfast with a common " spider," or skillet, 
is miserably slow compared with the way you can 
turn them off from the broad griddle, which gives 



HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. 13 

every slice a chance to brown. Use a cake turner 
for lifting everything that is fried, if you want to save 
time, and take them up in neat, whole slices instead 
of slovenly flakes. 

You need not burn your face over the kitchen 
stove if you only use a long, wooden-handled fork, 
such as the shops have for ten cents, and a long 
spoon for cooking. Let me tell you one thing; when 
you have baking and work over the stove, rubbing 
the face with sweet oil, glycerine, or vaseline, is very 
good to prevent that dryness and harshness of the 
skin which ruins faces early. You need not make your 
face to shine with it like a Central African, but rub a 
little into the skin after washing it and drying well, 
and wipe off all that shows on the cheeks. 

I know that sifting the coal ashes and blacking the 
stove are Anna Marians greatest dread ; they are so 
disagreeable. Her people are talking of buying a 
new range, and I hope that they will have one of 
those which screen the cinders before taking out the 
ashes. There are two or three screens in use which 
will sift ashes without as much dust as you would 
make sweeping the kitchen, and they cost a dollar 



14 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

each. A quarter of another week's wages of a first- 
class hired girl gone for that, and the life long dread 
of cinder sifting banished, and a quarter of the coal 
saved in a year. For the stove, nothing is better 
than the Brunswick black, the dull but beautiful 
finish of the best Berlin iron, used for fine grates. It 
is a varnish kept by dealers in high-class fire fittings, 
and costs fifty cents a quart, which will blacken all 
the grates and stoves in the house, only it won't do 
for sheet iron. When that is rusty rub it with a file 
or sand, and polish with common stove blacking 
mixed with turjDcntine varnish. Use this only when 
the stove is cold and the fire out, or the turpentine 
may blaze and burn you. Rub the moldings of your 
stoves with the Berlin black, and polish the top of 
the cook stove, as fast as it burns red, with the Magic 
blacking, which needs no hard rubbing to make it 
bright. 

Now for the dishwashing, in which you want to 
save time and save your hands too. I have washed 
dishes so often without wetting my hands till it was 
time to wring out the towels, that I'm sure Anna 
Maria can do it too with practise. Dishes well 



HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. 1 5 

scraped and piled at the left of the dish pan, the 
wooden drainer at the right, next the broad shelf 
under the slide window into the china closet, and 
there is no time lost going backward and forward 
with things. You save time in housekeeping by sec- 
onds and half minutes, but by the day's end they 
count in hours. If you can't wash the dishes imme- 
diately, cover them with water, wash and wipe the 
silver which will get dull by standing, and leave the 
rest till convenient. Plenty of hot water and soap, 
plenty of clean towels, and the little white dishmop, 
make washing dishes rather easy, pleasant work. 
But the tin pans and the stove ware ! How to save 
time and tribulation, listen to what I tell you. As 
soon as anything is cooked, empty kettle or pan, and 
pour in cold water at once, before a crust has time to 
form. When you find the hours of scraping and 
scouring saved by this simple care, you will be out of 
patience with careless folks who neglect it, to say 
nothing of keeping the tin boilers and saucepans in 
good order, by this plan. Wash kettles and cook- 
ing ware with the steel dishcloth of flexible rings 
linked together, which do the work of twenty scrapers, 



1 6 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

only you must fasten a wooden handle to it to keep 
your hands out of the hot water and the soda or lye 
you must use to keep the utensils nice. Rinse them 
all — I rinse my cooking things whether I do my 
plates or not, to keep them from any possibility of 
giving the taste of one day's cooking to the next. 
Then wipe tin and iron with coarse towels kept for 
them, to save your hands from wringing the dishcloth 
over and over. To save time, scald your tinware and 
dry it in the open oven or in the hot sun, turning it 
upside down to drain. 

If you want to know how much is saved by these 
little things, just time yourself by the clock and find 
how long it takes to do up the work mornings, how 
long to wash the dishes, how many minutes to sweep, 
how many to clean and polish stove, faucets, or any 
little brightening and scouring which always comes 
to hand. Then see how long you are sweeping and 
putting the sitting-room in order, and doing the 
chamber work. Nothing stimulates and guides work 
like timing it by the clock. You will find as other 
girls have found before you, that the kitchen work 
which may last two hours can be briskly and com- 



HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. 1 7 

fortably done in three quarters of an hour, and that 
chambers and sitting-room can be made perfectly 
neat in half an hour. Of course this provides for a 
way of doing work very different from that of the 
aesthetic damsels in stories who wave a feather dus- 
ter daintily and gingerly over the parlor ornaments 
for their forenoon's work. I've seen a young woman 
packing her trunk for a journey who was just thirty- 
five minutes folding and rolling up six pairs of red 
cotton stockings. I had the curiosity to glance at 
the time while she was about it. This was her usual 
gait and manner of doing things, very precise, very 
ladylike, never hurried, and intolerably slow. I hope 
when you pride yourselves on your ideal ladyhood, it 
won't include being so elegantly slow. There is too 
much to do, to enjoy, to learn in life not to get the 
fullest of our privileges, and the most of our time. 
You will find that you gain in a week's practise, by 
looking at the clock every ten minutes. It is the 
same kind of a check on dawdling or wasting 
moments that keeping an account is upon spending 
money. The waste stares you in the face, and 
shames or grieves you into doing better. 



i8 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

Learn all the swift ways chemistry provides for 
doing your work. If you want bright tin and brass 
and steel, as of course you do, you need not spend 
hours in scouring them. A ten-cent can of potash, 
and a sixpenny cake of sapolio, pride of the kitchen, 
or mineral soap, which are white and pleasant to use, 
will do the work for you. Dissolve a tablespoonful of 
potash in a gallon of boiling water in an iron kettle ; 
in this lye boiling hot dip all rusty articles for an 
instant or two till the spots look bright, then rinse at 
once, wash, and wipe dry. If a kettle or saucepan 
is burnt inside, pour in a cup of this lye, and scald 
till the crust comes off. Have you a rusty or greasy 
old jar to cleanse — wash it first, then fill with hot lye 
and let it stand half a day. Keep a jar or firkin of lye 
beside the sink, for you will want it for all sorts of 
things — taking rust from brass, iron and tin, cleaning 
pails, taking grease out of floors and shelves. The 
lye may be used for rinsing things over and over. A 
spoonful in dishwater, a cupful in water to scrub 
with, is very cleansing, only you must not let a drop 
fall on your clothes, for it will stain and burn, and you 
must use it with a swab, and not let it get on your 



HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. 19 

hands, or they will be ruined with cracks and sores. 
Always rinse your hands in vinegar and water after 
using it. If you are careful in its use lye is the 
greatest help in cleaning, and does away with all 
greasy, disagreeable and bad smelling work. A 
spoonful in a basin of warm water will clean old, 
grimy paint, and leave it looking bright as new. It 
must be rinsed ofif quickly and wiped dry, and it should 
not be used on varnished furniture or oiled wood. 

You want to make that smoky teakettle bright and 
nice enough to complete your kitchen picture when 
it sings for tea, and you don't want to scrub an hour 
over it. Make a strong hot suds with lye in it, dip 
the kettle in and wash the smoke off with a swab or 
brush, rinse it, drain dry, and clean with whiting and 
kerosene, or fine sapolio, applied with one large flan- 
nel, and polish with dry whiting and a fresh cloth. 
It is easier than decalcomanie, and then you keep 
your kettle bright by rubbing it every day with coarse 
paper. 

For all this cleaning of silver, brass and tin, 
you wear gloves to keep your hands from growing 
into paws, stiff, rough and unmanageable. If you 



20 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



can't get old kid gloves enough, cotton flannel gloves or 
mittens are good, made up the soft side in, and the 
s-eams outside opened and felled down. They should 
have long wrists to button over the dress-sleeve, and 
ought to be washed every day after getting through 
work. 

I hope you never wear anything but wash dresses 
about housework. It cannot be nice to wear cash- 
mere, flannel, or cloth for work, even if they are 
old dresses, for woolens catch dust and lint, and hold 
grease and smells of cooking and of suds in a dread- 
ful way, no matter how careful the wearer. A clean 
sixpenny print is far more ladylike for kitchen or 
sweeping work than a second-best flannel or serge, 
and it should be easy-fitting, large in the armholes, 
and without lining unless it is a double gown lined 
with print. An unlined print, without overskirt or 
trimming except a gathered flounce, is washed and 
ironed almost as easily as a bib apron, and can be 
made of six to eight yards of calico. Nor need it 
look like a housemaid's dress either. A fresh dark 
print, domestic gingham in small brown or blue 
check, an indigo or china blue percale with small 



HOW TO MAKE HOUSEWORK EASIER. 21 

white dots, are any of them very pretty made as an 
English gown, gathered in a belt at the waist, the 
skirt rather scant, but fullness added by a small 
flounce at the feet, the sleeves gathered on the 
shoulder and tapered in leg-of-mutton fashion to the 
wrist, or gathered in a band like the old bishop 
sleeves which are worn again. The white collar and 
little brooch or bow of ribbon at the throat, the stout 
apron of crash, ready to take all traces of rough 
work, the smart slippers and red or blue stockings 
are picturesque enough to suit any girl who has taste 
as well as fancy. 



IL— THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 

YOU would like to know how to get the upper- 
hand of your work, and keep it, instead of 
having it drive you all your life long ? 

Then let me tell you, Anna Maria, that you can't 
begin too early after you are thirteen, the practise of 
housekeeping. You may go to a cooking-class and 
learn to make charlotte russe, and arrowroot for 
invalids, and bone turkey for parties, and it is very 
useful to know just how an expert cook does these 
things; you may go to lectures which tell you all 
about the carbons and nitrogens of food, and how 
they combine ; you may read and write down any 
number of recipes in nice little blank books, yet the 
first half-day's housekeeping will bring you face to face 
with more that you don't know than you ever dreamed 
of. You can as well expect to become a painter by 

22 



THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 23 

reading the hosts of books written on art, and*study- 
ing galleries of pictures, without handling a brush, as 
to learn anything about housekeeping without going 
into the drudgery with your own hands. 

What is more, you must resolve to take the re- 
sponsibility of the work, and learn what it is to be 
the working power of the whole household machine. 
You must learn how to be up to time with prompt 
meals, and laundry-work, to have supplies of clean 
clothes and towels always ready, to keep rooms tidy 
and fresh, and to renew things as they wear out, so 
that the word "homely " in your mind will never sig- 
nify shabby or mean. 

It is no small thing to stand at the head of affairs, 
and be the motive power on which depend the wel- 
fare and credit, the health, temper and spirit of the 
whole family. A late breakfast sends father and 
brothers to business with the whole day thrown out 
of shape ; a poor meal leaves all the family to 
work or study without proper supplies to work upon, 
and they will feel weak, nervous and lacking in 
energy, perhaps in some vital crisis like that which 
found Napoleon at a memorable battle. The fortunes 



24 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

of the field were wavering ; a bold movement at the 
right hour would have saved the day, but a badly 
cooked dinner had given him a headache, his brain 
was clouded and confused, his heart palpitating, 
when he needed clear head and firm nerve — he gave 
the wrong order and the battle was lost. When in 
midlife you come to find how essential the comfort 
of a well-kept home is to the bodily strength and 
good conditions, to a sound mind and spirit, and use- 
ful days, you will reverence the good housekeeper as 
I do — above artist or poet, beauty or genius. 

Between you and me, Anna Maria, it takes genius 
to be a first-rate housekeeper. A woman of third- 
rate wdll " let things go," and think they will " do,'' 
and make up all sorts of clever-sounding excuses for 
her shiftlessness, and even make a virtue of neglect, 
pretending she lets them slip for matters of higher 
importance. But the woman of keen mind and 
senses finds the dust in corners, and the smells from 
the sink and pantry, and the careless laundry and 
chamberwork intolerable and not to be borne, and 
amends all that other people have " put up with," to 
the injury of their health and brains, for generations. 



THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 25 

You may not be a genius of the first rank, Anna 
Maria, but you may have what goes with genius — a 
spirit of the first and finest order, which tolerates no 
secondary, slipshod work of any sort. 

While your mother is gone to Tiverton will be a 
good time to begin your responsible housekeeping 
you think ? 

Before your mother goes will be better, for you 
will find the experience of an old housekeeper at 
hand the next thing to having a fairy godmother 
popping up out of the meal-chest or the chimney cor- 
ner at the right minute. You will want all that your 
mother and aunt Jane and old 'Cretia, the colored 
washerwoman, and the receipt books can tell you. I 
never let any mortal, old or young, great or under- 
sized, go out of my house without their telling me 
at least one thing I didn't know before, and you will 
find literally no end to the notions and helps you can 
pick up day by day. 

To-morrow you begin then to do your best, and to 
better it. My dear child, to-morrow always begins 
the night before, and you can't get the good of your 
day without planning for it. To get breakfast quickly. 



26 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

you want ever so much done the night before. Not 
as the over-smart, half-taught women say in those won- 
derful home departments of the country papers, which 
show how little our women know about housekeeping, 
by grinding coffee and filling the teakettle the night 
before. The coffee loses flavor, and water that has 
been standing all night absorbs bad air and is unfit 
to use. Besides it is so flat that it can never make 
good tea or coffee. But you can have the dining- 
room swept and in order, the table set if necessary, 
and covered with a large white mosquito netting 
kept for the purpose. You are to bake bread to-mor- 
row, and no good housekeeper wants bread " riz by 
daylight,'* as that funny Mrs. Sanford says in the 
Round Robin novel. You want your fire to keep 
over night, in cool weather, and let me tell you that 
learning to manage a coal fire has tested the wits and 
endurance of cleverer women than you or I ever shall 
be. STiake down the ashes, and put on fresh coal 
with a layer of cinders on the top, then close all the 
drafts except the smoke draft. Why? Because else 
the gas from the fresh coal will fill the room with a 
dangerous, sometimes fatal air, and that from the 



THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 2^ 

cinders is worse. You see that little blue flame 
playing on the top of the cinders ? That denotes the 
presence of carbonic-oxide gas, which is to the dreaded 
carbonic-acid gas that kills people in mines and 
in old wells, what prussic acid is to arsenic, swifter 
and deadlier. The one thousandth part of this ^gas 
mingled with common air has proved fatal, and the 
worst is that it has no smell that people commonly 
notice. Not long ago a whole school in Connecticut 
was found insensible from the fumes of this gas 
escaping from the box-stove which had been crammed 
with fresh coal and the drafts all closed. A work- 
man's family were found dead from the same cause 
last year, having filled their cylinder stove with coal 
for the night and shut it up to keep. Always leave 
the smoke-draft open in stove, range or furnace. 
When there is a wind or it is very cold weather, and 
the draft is stronger than usual, drawing through 
every chink and seam of the iron, close the damper 
half way, and leave one of the stove-covers half off, 
sticking the poker into the fire to keep the lid in 
place. 

In the morning, if you want early breakfast, never 



28 . ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

wait for coal to burn up, but half fill your teakettle, 
pumping off the water tliat has stood in the pipe all 
night till it runs cold and fresh — put four or five 
large sticks of kindling, three inches thick, to be par- 
ticular, on the coals, open the drafts and whip on 
kettle and frying-pan to catch every instant's heat. 
You can in a good stove, cook beefsteak and potatoes, 
griddle cake and wheaten grits, or bake biscuit with 
this fire, by the time it burns down ready to put coal 
on. It ought not to take you more than fifteen min- 
utes to get such a breakfast from the time the first 
blaze starts. It takes Irish Ann an hour and a half 
with her potherings and pokings, but with your intel- 
ligence and quick nerves you can do better. You 
may not do it the first time of trying, nor in a week, 
but in a fortnight, or month at the outside, you should 
have difficulties in your grasp and your hands so 
trained that things go of themselves. 

To-night you may set griddle cakes, stirring corn 
meal, flour, or graham meal as you prefer into sour 
milk, or mixing with milk and water and cream of 
tartar or a spoonful of molasses, leaving the jar in a 
warm place to sour and rise. Why do you mix these 



THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 29 

over-night? So that the meal or flour can more thor- 
oughly absorb the water or milk and swell each 
particle and develop its flavor as it cannot in hasty 
mixing just before it is cooked. You will find the 
difference in the goodness of your cakes next morn- 
ing. Sift your flour three times to make it light, 
after its compression within the barrel in which it 
was packed. Graham or corn meal will answer with 
once sifting. You want to sift graham, no matter 
how nice it looks, down to the bran, and take out 
any black specks; then put all the bran into the flour 
again. It needs to be sifted in this careful way 
because the graham, or wheat meal, which is the 
better name, easily heats or ferments in keeping, and 
may breed worms in spite of the careful grocer or 
housekeeper. Each quart of milk or water for making 
griddle cakes will take a heaping pint of flour or meal 
to make batter just right ; if thick at night it will be 
thin enough when mixed in the morning. Keep this 
rule in your head, for it will insure griddle cakes that 
are good if other points are attended to. Set the 
batter in an earthen jar or pitcher twice as large as 
the amount it is to hold, for the mixture will swell 



30 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

and rise, and you want to be able to stir it without 
spattering or overflowing the vessel. You will pre- 
vent those dismal catastrophes of spoiled dresses, 
and floors and tables overrun with your cooking, by 
remembering always to use a large pan or jar for 
mixing. 

To wash the potatoes, which you fancy must be 
disagreeable, let them soak in plenty of water five 
minutes while you mix the cakes, then scrub them 
with a stiff whisk broom or brush, stirring them 
well in the pail, which is the best thing to hold them. 
Drain and rinse, then with a sharp penknife cut off 
the seed ends in a thin slice at each end, and cut out 
all rough or discolored spots w^hich make the potato 
unsafe to eat. People should be much more par- 
ticular about the quality of potatoes than they are, 
for a good sound potato is excellent eating, but poor 
potatoes are slow poison. Physicians have no doubt 
that cancer, and violent irritations of the blood, are 
caused by eating poor potatoes, infected with disease 
or poisoned by bugs and worms. No green-tinted or 
"false-hearted'' potato is fit for food, and if it goes 
into the pot, it will spoil others boiled with it. You 



THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 3 1 

need not pare potatoes before boiling; remove all 
spots and leave them over night in plenty of water 
to freshen. If they stain your fingers, rub them with 
pumice stone or on the kitchen grindstone, which will 
leave them like satin for smoothness and neatness. 

Set your bread, which I won't tell you about just 
now, and cover your mixtures with a cloth, and saucer 
or board over that. Have a broad soapstone or four 
bricks warm on the back of the stove to place the 
bread and batter on, for one great point in having 
either of these good is to keep them evenly warm all 
the time without burning, which the bricks will insure, 
as they hold heat. Bread should be covered with a 
fresh cloth and a piece of blanket over that with a 
board to keep all in place. 

What next 1 If you have a cat and dog, you are 
bound to see that they are comfortable ; the dog in a 
good dry kennel with board floor lined with pine 
shavings which keep away the fleas that torment him. 
Remember to offer both dog and cat water the 
last thing at night, for want of which they often suf- 
fer before morning. You will be shocked to know 
how much our dumb faithful friends and pets suffer 



32 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

at our hands from thoughtlessness. They cannot 
complain, till extremity drives them to a whine or 
howl, and the only way to prevent this undeserved 
torture is to provide for their wants beforehand, reg- 
ularly. Put yourself in their place, and do as you 
would have them do by you, were they masters for 
once. Give the cat her basket or cushion, unless she 
prefers gallivanting by moonlight. 

You never want to shut up a room with a sink in 
it, unless in the coldest nights, for more or less bad 
air constantly comes up the waste pipes from the 
sewer or from the mucus which lines pipes in use, 
and which will certainly affect all food in the room or 
closets adjoining. Meat, milk and butter are espe- 
cially sensible of taint from the malaria, and diphthe- 
ria often is traced to this cause in very good houses. 
You want to leave one or more windows down at the 
top for four inches, securing them from being opened 
by burglars by a stout nail in a hole bored through 
sash and frame, like an old-fashioned spring-bolt. 
Or a stout stick placed upright between the upper 
bar of the top sash and the top of the lower one, will 
keep it safe. 



THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 33 

The last part of a housekeeper's duty is to go over 
the house and see that outside doors and windows 
are secure, and this is no light responsibility. 

I know it was the great care of my life when I 
first had a house of my own, for I could not sleep till 
I had seen that every window w^as latched, and a 
nail above the sash, and the doors bolted and locked 
from cellar to attic. You must see to this yourself, 
or you will find as I did, on leaving it to servants or 
brothers, that the family went the risk of sleeping 
with the hall door open all night, somebody carelessly 
shooting the bolt without trying it to see if the latch 
was caught ; or the back windows and pantry were left 
open and unguarded, a silent invitation for any prowler 
to step ill. You remember that fearful Hull murder in 
New York, when the negro Cox confessed that the sight 
of the open parlor windows, so easy of access, tempted 
him to pilfer, and then to suffocate his victim to pre- 
vent detection ? It is a world of trouble to wander 
over a house, trying each of fifty windows perhaps, 
looking in the coal-hole and the closet under the 
stairs, and I have been laughed at for my care more 
times than was pleasant. You may look a score of 



34 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

years without finding anything amiss, but it is good 
comfort hearing any unusual noise in the night to be 
sure it is no prowler inside the house. Or if you 
ever found a ruffian's face looking through the slats 
of the window blind at eleven o'clock at night, as 
you sat writing in a lonely country house with only 
frightened women in it beside yourself, there will be 
unspeakable courage in the first thought that every 
bar was fast between him and the house. That little 
experience I went through one night in a cottage on 
the Nantasket road, and behind bolted doors and 
windows was able to hold parley with the intruder till 
neighbors heard our alarm, and drove him off. The 
same night two other houses on the way were entered 
through unguarded upper windows, and robbed of 
considerable amounts, doubtless by the same fellow. 
It was worth the five years' trouble before, the getting 
out of bed midnights and wandering over the house 
to be sure no bolt was neglected, or the cellar door 
forgotten, to have the habit and the assurance that 
all was safe that one particular moment. 

Fasten doors with bolt and lock, leaving the key in 
the lock, and securing it against being turned from 



THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND. 35 

without by a stout wire bent over the shank of the 
door knob, both ends put through the hoop of the 
key, and turned up outside of it. Hang a chair on the 
knob if you like. Windows should have sash catches, 
but a nail driven above the lower sash is a very good 
safeguard, and blinds should be always closed at night 
with stout "snaps," which no wind can blow open. 

Have pails of water drawn, in case of fire or sick- 
ness, and leave the kettle filled on the stove, to be 
ready with hot water for sudden cramp or congestion. 
It may save a life sometime to have hot water 
promptly, when ten minutes would be too late. 
Remember, in housekeeping as in everything else, 
nothing is so sure to happen as the unforeseen. 



III. _ A GOOD BREAKFAST. 

^ I ^HE secret of a good- day is a good morning.^ 
and a good morning always begins the night 
before. So many things toward a good start the 
coming day can be done the hour before you retire. 
The coffee is not to be ground or the teakettle 
filled to spoil over night, as I told you, but the 
dining-room can be swept, the table set with silver 
and china, the clean mosquito netting thrown over it, 
to keep off dust, and the fire laid for kindling if 
necessary. Night too is the time for little personal 
cares which thriftless people hurry through on rising, 
with breakfast duties waiting, and are apt to slight 
accordingly. Then is the time to wash neck, ears, 
arms and armpits daily with soap and hot water, for 

one perspires more when active, and no care is too 

36 



A GOOD BREAKFAST. 37 

nice to prevent odors from clinging about dress and 
person, which are the vulgar but unnecessary conse- 
quence of housework. At night brush the hair 
thoroughly, and wash it once a week ; rub your 
slippers with glycerine polish, baste the fresh ruffle 
in your gown, trim your fingernails and sew on the 
loose button. It will be a relief to find your dress 
and belongings ready to slip into next morning. If 
you do not bathe daily, and are in more or less dust, 
thorough neatness demands washing the feet nightly 
as much as washing the neck, and a fresh pair of 
stockings every day will be necessary for our nice 
housekeeper, even if she washes them herself. There 
is the comfort of doing one's own work, that no 
Bridget can grumble over the quantity of clean 
towels and toilet-covers, hose and pillow-cases found 
desirable. 

Now for this hurry of early breakfast, which is the 
bugbear of the day ; you must strive and practise 
till it is a machine matter down to the smallest point. 
Set the water from the faucet running the first thing, 
draw on sw^eeping-cap and gloves for stove-work, and 
let me whisper one secret again ; rub glycerine or 



38 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

sweet oil on your cheeks to prevent burning them 
over the fire. Fill the teakettle, and have your 
frying-pan and griddles on before lighting the fire, 
as I told you, that they may catch every bit of heat, 
open the dampers five minutes till the stove roars, 
then close the oven damper to throw the heat to the 
top of the stove, where it is needed instead of up 
chimney. If you want an early breakfast, you must 
have potatoes and cracked wheat or oatmeal boiled 
the day before; then coffee can be made, beefsteak 
cooked, potatoes stewed or fried in American style, 
the mush steamed or fried brown, and griddle cakes 
begun or eggs boiled, in fifteen minutes from the time 
you come down. Time yourself by the clock, day 
after day, until you can do this. You, Anna Maria, 
are supposed to bring quicker brains and more 
natural skill to your w^ork than Bridget, and her 
slovenly, dragging ways are as disgraceful to you as 
her bad grammar, or tawdry Sunday bonnet would 
be. 

No attitudinizing, no fine lady affectations over the 
griddles and saucepans ; instead, cultivate the fine 
character which acts up to the need of the hour 



A GOOD BREAKFAST. 39 

swiftly, promptly, but with the quiet and certainty 
which keeps briskness from turning into vulgar 
hurry. Your object is to send the family off to 
school and business with a good start and good 
breakfast, which gives them cheer and strength to 
face the day, a capital better than money for people 
who have real work to do in the world. I have 
heard a girl of sixteen say: "Father isn't particular, 
and I get what's easiest for breakfast, bread and 
butter and tea, and a slice of ham, a little cold meat 
for lunch, and whatever happens for dinner, and he 
never says a word ; " and I have seen the father look- 
ing worn and uncomplaining, going from his com- 
fortless breakfast, and ill-kept house, to his day's 
work, or the young clerk, her brother, going to the 
office to work indoors all day, shut from the fresh air 
and sunshine which feed one, growing paler *and 
thinner month after month, without the support of 
good, warm relishing food, which the girl was too 
careless to prepare, or to see that the servant 
prepares. 

I want to speak seriously about this matter of 
providing good food, as it is something on which our 



40 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

brains, morals and tempers depend, as well as our 
bodily strength. Good food is not rich food, still 
less is it the *' tolerable " fare which is just under- 
cooked and flavorless enough to tax digestion more 
than it ought. 

The really good food helps one to do the most 
work with least fatigue; to study with the bright- 
est thought. It is the best of everything cooked 
in the nicest possible way, and with pleasant variety. 
It may be simple fare, but the potatoes will be the 
whitest and dryest "selected," as marketmen say; 
the steak, whether sirloin or " chuck,'' will be freshly 
cut, bright and clean; the butter faultless even if 
you go without it at dinner as the French do, for the 
sake of having the best, and the coffee, flour and 
meal in your storeroom will be the best of their 
kind". Then it will be as delicately cooked and 
neatly served as at the most expensive restaurant, if 
not better; for your ambition will be to have as many 
niceties as possible at home which are not known 
abroad. 

It has been quite the fashion to say that the 
French habit of taking a roll and cup of coffee on 



A GOOD BREAKFAST. 41 

rising, with a substantial breakfast at noon, was the 
only correct way, but those who thought so discover 
that different climates and habits require difference 
of. food. So the bright girl who pines to change the 
order of her mother's house, and plans for breakfast 
of cafe-au-lait and rolls, like that at French pensions, 
or of toast and marmalade, because that is the correct 
thing in English novels, is reminded that the people 
who find such fare sufficient, dined about seven in the 
evening, and had some rusk and wine, or bread and 
cheese, or ices before they went to bed at midnight or 
later. Busy Americans who took supper at five, or 
dinner at six, and went to bed at ten, require the 
comfortable breakfast common at our tables. Honor 
your own customs as natural and fit for the country 
and society when found ; for highbred foreigners 
easily learn to prefer the cheery American breakfast 
with all the steak, broiled chicken, muffins, maple 
syrup, apple butter, and the rest of the nice country 
variety. We will take the standard breakfast, Anna 
Maria, and see how it can be improved. 

Except in very cold weather, fruit is always accept- 
able, and should be your table decoration instead of 



42 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



flowers, which refined taste begins to find out of place 
among meats and vegetables. " Arranging the flowers 
for the table '' is one of the genteel young lady's 
duties which we can gratefully dispense with. Have 
them in the room, but on mantel or brackets, where 
their odor will not mingle with that of coffee and 
broiled meats. Nice mellow apples, grapes and 
oranges are in season most of the year, and, dressed 
wdth leaves, are the most tempting centre piece for 
the table. The fruit can be arranged the night be- 
fore and left in a cool place, the same leaves placed 
in water after each meal, lasting a week. The next 
dish is usually wheat, hominy or oatmeal, with sugar 
and milk. Wheat is better for general use, as it has 
more phosphate for the brain and bones, and is less 
oily than oatmeal, and better for the complexion. 
The very best way to eat either is with meats and 
gravies as a ^-egetable ; but the food which made Cae- 
sar's legions strong, deserves to be well cooked. 
The *^ steam-cooked " and " prepared " wheat is by 
no means as good as the plainer sort which any good 
miller can furnish, so it has been carefully washed 
and dried before grinding, the thinnest outer scale 



A GOOD BREAKFAST. 43 

taken off and the grain cracked or cut to be as little 
floury as possible. The "crushed white wheat " is a 
good staple article. Cook it the afternoon before, in 
the farina boiler, or in a tin pail set on a trivet in a 
kettle half full of boiling water. To a quart of fresh 
boiling water in the pail add eight large tablespoon- 
fuls of wheat, dropping it in gently, and letting it 
mingle without stirring, and a teaspoonful of salt. 
This will be very thin and watery at first, but will 
swell in cooking. Cover, and set a few moments 
over the hot fire till the water in both kettles boils 
hard, then set back where it will simmer half an hour, 
the last ten minutes with the cover off the pail to let 
the water evaporate. The grains should be swelled 
and distinct as rice. Watch to see that it does not 
burn, and do not stir it, as that makes it pasty. If 
you like, add half a cup of raisins or currants which 
have been soaking half an hour in a warm place, 
when the wheat begins to boil. This is nice with the 
sugar and milk. When done, pour into a dish ; if 
nicely cooked, the wheat comes out in a mass, leav- 
ing the kettle quite clean. Next morning all you 
have to do is to set the dish into a steamer over 



44 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

boiling water and heat through to make it ready for 
table, unless you like it fried in thick slices on a 
large, very hot griddle, with just enough butter or 
nice fat to keep it from sticking; or shaped between 
the bowls of two large spoons into balls, dipped in 
beaten egg and fried brown and dry in a kettle of fat 
for queen fritters ; or stirred with three eggs, minced 
beef, pepper, and a half cup of gravy, and baked in a 
pudding-pan, for a side dish. 

Now for your cold boiled potatoes, which you may 
serve stewed or fried in butter or nice fat on the big 
griddle, so that each piece will brown well, instead of 
jumbling them into the frying-pan to be half scorched 
and half sodden in the common sorry fashion. For 
frying this way, you may use rather dull-looking pota- 
toes, which will fry dry and light, but it takes white 
mealy ones to make a nice dish stewed. Don't try 
Saratoga potatoes till you can cook plain fried ones 
well that have been boiled beforehand, taking them 
up with the griddle-cake turner to keep each piece 
whole, browning each like a pancake, peppering and 
salting Qver the fire, so that the flavor will cook into 
them, and arranging neatly on a hot platter in over- 



A GOOD BREAKFAST. 



45 



lapping rows, when you will find potatoes a V A^neri- 
caine quite as satisfactory as any of the French ways. 
But I will not give recipes, save a hint or two on 
points where many questions have been asked, as 
about the cooking of wheaten grits. These chapters 
are not about cookery, but housekeeping, and it will be 
more help to give a list of simple things for breakfast 
which you can learn to cook from the many pleasant 
books on the subject. For every second-rate house- 
keeper I ever knew, was wont to declare that the 
hardest thing in her life was to tell what to get for 
three meals a day. Now let us lay this bugbear once 
and forever, Anna Maria, by finding out what there is 
to have if we can get it, what we can have, and what 
we will choose to have for two weeks ahead. I will 
give you a list made by a real housekeeper for her 
own use, and you can strike out all that you cannot 
get; write down your list of supplies, and make up 
your memorandum of what you will have for break- 
fast each day for the week or fortnight to come. It 
will be an evening's fun making out your list with 
the help of the family whose tastes are to be 
consiulted in the matter. The dishes below are 



46 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

-v. 
specially served for breakfast in a good style of 

living. 

WHAT SHALL WE HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? 

Fresh fruits in season, raw tomatoes sliced, radishes, 
salads, cresses. 

Farina, wheaten grits, oatmeal, pearl hominy, samp, 
and all these fried. Boiled rice and corn mush are 
only served at breakfast fried in slices. 

Dry toast, cream, and egg toast, corn muffins, gra- 
ham or wheat muffins ( vulgarly called gems ), queen 
fritters, corn bread, brown biscuits, flannel cakes, 
corn orwheatmeal griddle cakes, buckwheat in season, 
rice, hominy, and oatmeal cakes, and, best of all, 
Adirondack pancakes. 

Baked potatoes, Saratoga, lyonnaise, stewed, fried, 
with gravy ; baked sweet potatoes. 

Sweet corn fritters in season, carrot-mince, oyster 
plant and parsnips, parsnip fritters, vegetable hash, 
fried squash, baked beans, fried apples. 

Beefsteak, veal cutlets, mutton chops, venison steak 
in season, salmon steak. 

Fresh fish, fried and broiled, fish-cakes, oyster frit- 



A GOOD BREAKFAST. 47 

ters, clam fritters, fish with cream, omelets, dropped 
eggs, hash, on toast and with eggs, broiled chicken, 
Maryland chicken, lamb tenderloins, kidneys with 
vegetables, calfs brains with tomato sauce, giblet 
toast, potted squirrel, Oxford sausage, turkey or 
chicken hash, potted meats ; beef jelly for summer 
breakfasts. 

Apple, peach or quince butter, wild raspberry jam, 
cider apple sauce, baked pears and apples, honey, 
maple syrup, white sugar syrup, melon syrup. Coffee, 
cocoa, chocolate with vanilla or cinnamon flavor, 
dandelion coffee, and root beer or lemonade tea, the 
three last in spring and summer. 

Few of the above are expensive dishes even for 
plain families, and I advise you to make it a year's 
study to learn how to cook them. Any family of five 
spending from eight to ten dollars a week on mar- 
keting can afford such a bill of fare, if there is a 
careful little housekeeper and clever cook at the 
helm. You will hear this questioned, but I have the 
bills of a city family to show for it, and in many parts 
of the country things are much cheaper. You can't 
afford such fare with a common servant at any such 



48 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

price, for it takes a clever person to spend money 
well. Perhaps you will like to spend an evening 
with me over a lady's accounts, and see what part they 
play in nice housekeeping. 



D 



IV. — A LADY'S ACCOUNT BOOKS. 

O you see that shabby little pocket memorandum 
book with blue cover and pencil tuck, on the 



hanging shelf with the smart octavos in Russia 
leather? That is a little girl's first account book, 
given with her first whole dollar to spend, by her 
father, when she was seven years old. You will find 
every penny of it set down scrupulously in the shaky 
handwriting : ten cents for writing paper, five cents 
worth of liquorice, three cents postage — it was just 
after the ten-cent postage for every letter was abol- 
ished — eight cents worth of zephyr wool, one cent 
for lozenges, five cents to a younger sister — ah, how 
many things that dollar bought ! It lasted the greater 
part of a year for spending money I believe, till she 
was promoted to an allowance of five cents a week 
spending money, which you will fi_nd faithfully set 

49 



50 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

down each Saturday, with one fearful lapse of months 
when it went to pay for a yard of ribbon, which she 
understood the clerk to say was four cents, but proved 
when cut and done up to be four shillings, or fifty 
cents. The clerk offered to take it back, seeing the 
little girl's mistake, but an order was an order with 
her childish sense of honor, and she paid for it with 
her mother's money, and stopped her allowance till 
the sum was made up. How hard it was to do with- 
out any money so long, and how ugly that ribbon 
looked always ! I want to say that it would have 
been strictly right and ladylike to have let the clerk 
take it back, as the mistake was honestly made, and 
as long as we are not infallible, we should not be too 
proud to accept consideration for our blunders. 

But it was long ago, and the slim young lady account 
book next it in blue morocco, has two or three stories 
of foolish expense nearly as sad to tell. But they 
went down in black and white, and did this good : 
that one day the owner sat down and counted up all 
the useless sums spent in a year, and at the head of 
the next page you see written the solemn injunction : 
"No more confectionery, no newspapers, no nuts, no 



A LADYS ACCOUNT BOOKS. 5 1 

photographs ; " for in these trifles enough had been 
frittered away to buy the silk dress which was desir- 
able for evening wear, and which could not possibly 
be afforded when it was most needed. The poor 
little student had felt that five dollars a year was 
more than she could aiford to pay as subscription to 
a good library, yet in two years she had spent for 
occasional magazines and weeklies over twelve dollars, 
when the library would have given her the reading of 
all the home and foreign magazines, and a hundred 
newspapers, with all the books she wanted beside. 

It was a faithful lesson which the blue account 
book read to her, and when she went to housekeeping 
on a limited income, the first thing bought was a 
family account book, which did more, she says, to 
keep down expense than anything in the world. One 
can't go on spending needlessly with the record and 
balance of loss staring her in the face every day and 
week. Her New Year gift sometime ago was a set 
of housekeeping books, in small octavo, bound in 
dark-red leather to match, and a pretty show they 
make — Inventory, Personal Expense, Day book and 
Ledger — they are the handsomest volumes in the 



52 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

bookcase, and placed among poets and birthday books. 
Anna Maria, there are sheets of account paper 
sold at ten cents a quire, and the first thing this 
evening you want to make out a list of all the house- 
keeping articles in the house, and the condition they 
are in. Women usually keep the run of such things in 
their minds ; but it is more businesslike, and makes 
matters clearer to know what you have in writing. 
Then you know whether the wind has blown away 
dinner napkins and pillow cases, or whether the 
washerwoman scorched a pair and tucked them in 
the coal hole, and whether the new sheets wore as 
long as they should, or whether there is soda in 
the new washing-mixture eating them thin every 
week, and a dozen other things a housekeeper must 
be aware of. You must go with pencil and paper 
through the house, making a rough list — " taking 
account of stock '' — which you will find much to your 
profit. Have one page for table linen, a second 
for bed linen, which is the name for it, though it's 
all cotton ; another for the clothing, a page for each 
one of the family ; the furniture, bedding, crockery 
and china, kitchen ware, stores — that is, flour, meats, 



A lady's account books. 53 

preserves, wood, coal, and things bought by quan- 
tity. You see how it is set down in this book. 

Table linen, July 13th, 1881. 

I doz. breakfast napkins, nearly new, 
1-2 " " " half worn, 

I doz. dinner napkins, fern pattern, new, 
I ** " " snowdrop " ten mo*s wear, 

1 " cake " fringed, " " " 
3 half bleached tablecloths, 

3 white check, " " " " 

2 dark-red lunch cloths, six mo's " 
I blue and silver-gray " new, 

I wild rose cloth, 3 yds. long, good, 
I scroll pattern " " *' worn, 

April 20th, 1882. 

1 double damask dinner cloth, lily pattern, 

2 half bleached breakfast cloths, snowdrop pattern, 

I 3-4 doz. napkins, oak-leaf pattern. 

June 1 8th. 
Made four tray-cloths from scroll pattern tablecloth. Also 

two window-seat cushions from old turkey-red cloth. 

Here is the china closet inventory : 

8 plain china coffee cups & saucers, 

12 " " tea " 10 

13 " " breakfast plates, perfect, 
7 " " " " cracked, 



54 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

9 cut glass water goblets, 
14 common " " 

I " glass pitcher, 
24 jelly glasses, and so on. 
Silverware. 

I plated dinner castor, 

I " breakfast " 

I doz. silver teaspoons, 

I doz. ice cream " 

6 silver tablespoons 

4 " " " gold lined, 

I " fish-slice, 

I cake basket, plated, etc. 

You see this inventory only has to be made out 
two or three times in a life, and you may give your 
spare hours for a week to making it. After this, you 
must put down everything bought, or made up, or 
lost, and go over the count as often as necessary. 
The housekeeper in a large English family keeps 
such an inventory, and compares it once a week with 
the articles in use to see that none are lost or stolen. 
If you do your own work, once a month will be often 
enough to count up the spoons and toilet covers, the 
socks and handkerchiefs, and all the rest. 



A LADYS ACCOUNT BOOKS. 55 

Next you want a few folio sheets of bill paper in a 
stiff pasteboard cover, easy to write on, with a pencil 
tied to a string ; this cheap day book to hang in the 
kitchen beside the calendar and clock. Here every 
item is entered which you buy, whether on credit or 
paid for at once. Also have a letter hook, clip, or 
some contrivance for holding bills which the butcher, 
baker and candlestick maker will send in once a 
week or once a month, if you buy on credit ; and 
remember! always ask for a bill when you buy 
things, unless the purchase is very trifling and paid 
for immediately, and always make the dealer receipt 
that bill when you pay it, signing his name and 
"received payment," plainly; lastly, keep all your 
bills whether paid or not, to the end of the year, when 
small receipts may be burned. ^/7£/^j'i" keep receipts 
for rent, board, taxes, for borrowed money, if you ever 
have to borrow, and it is not a bad plan to file all 
your bills of every sort ; that is, put them away in reg- 
ular order. People who change from place to place 
often, will find it wise never to destroy a receipted 
bill. Mistakes will happen with honest folks ; petty 
dishonesty is not so uncommon as it ought to be — 



56 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

a dealer's clerk may forget to enter your bill as paid 
on his book, or he may think it smart to try to collect 
the money twice, or there may be persons of the same 
name as yours who have not paid their bills; but if 
you have the dealer's bill in his own or his clerk's 
writing, with that little ^^ Rec'd pay' t, John Smit/i,'^ or 
whatever his name is, that settles the matter : you can- 
not be called on to pay it over. You will find the 
habit of keeping receipts save you a world of cheating 
when you take that tour in Europe which every girl 
looks forward to as a possibility in her life, for conti- 
nental shopkeepers have a trick of getting the same 
bill paid two or three times, unless one is shrewd 
enough to have the receipt to show. 

With the inventory, your hasty day book and a bet- 
ter book in which you enter the sum of each week's 
expense with different dealers, or under the heads of 
fuel, meats, vegetables, furnishings, groceries, etc., your 
housekeeping accounts can be kept in good shape. It 
is no small credit to a girl to have a set of neatly kept 
books, by turning to which she can see at a moment, 
what each week's expense has been, how much has 
been made or saved in housekeeping, and w^hat indul- 



A lady's account books. 57 

gence in spending she will be able to allow. 

The next thing you need to learn, Anna Maria, is, 
just what ought to be allowed for everything. Plow 
much coal or wood is enough for each fire one day, 
week and month ; how much flour, sugar, meat and 
vegetables you need for each person in the family;- 
how much coffee goes to make a cup or a quart, 
strong or common; how much gas or kerosene should 
be*burned ; how long supplies ought to last — this 
knowledge is one of the most important parts of house- 
keeping, and one which people know the least about. 

But if you don't know how much it takes to feed 
and warm the family with comfort, how can you order 
supplies so as to have plenty on hand, and yet not 
waste as much as you use ? If ten dollars a week is 
all your father can afford to pay for groceries and 
fuel, how can you be sure you are not spending more 
than you can pay, or that you get all the pleasant liv- 
ing you might out of that sum ? This kind of wisdom 
makes a woman a good manager, and she will keep a 
family well dressed with a good table and a trifle to 
spare for the same money on which a family of poor 
contrivance is always pinching and running behind. 



58 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

I don't want you to learn to save for stinginess' sake, 
but that you may have all the good and pretty things 
money and labor can bring you. I well remember 
the sense of control over affairs it gave me to find 
that it was possible to calculate the quantities and 
cost of housekeeping as exactly as the yards of lining 
and trimming to make a dress. Now here are some 
things you want to make note of : 

One third of a ton of coal should keep fire all day 
in a stove or open grate one month ; and you must 
allow that amount for the cooking range ten months 
in the year. In summer many families contrive to do 
most of their baking and roasting the same day the 
ironing is done, and only light the range that day, 
cooking by a kerosene stove the rest of the time. 

Good management will have enough left from the 
three tons for the range to last for this summer fire. 
A No. 8. furnace should burn night and day on half 
a ton a month, and a large one takes not over one 
ton a month when well managed. A large base burn- 
ing stove run night and day to full heating power 
needs not over half a ton. One half cord of pine, and 
the same of dry oak, should be kindling enough for 



A LADY^S ACCOUNT BOOKS. 59 

range, furnace and two extra fires one year. Now, 
find how many fires you need to keep in the house, 
and the price of fuel, and calculate how much you 
must order in a year, and what it will cost. Find out 
how much actually is used in the house in one year, 
and see whether it is less or more than the estimate. 
Your father can tell you what the coal and kindling 
bills amount to in a twelve month, and if it is more 
than half a ton a month for each full fire, there is 
waste going on which ought to be stopped, and it 
will be your work to save that waste. If you can 
have just as good fires and just as warm rooms by 
burning ten dollars less in coal in a year, that ten 
dollars can go toward new books, pictures, or new 
china and furnishings. I advise every boy and girl 
twelve years old and over, to learn how to build and 
keep fires in furnace, range, grates or stoves with the 
least waste of fuel, for it is knowledge certain to be 
useful. A man once told me his kitchen range used 
two tons of coal a month, although it was the same 
size as my own which only used half a ton to do the 
same work. There were twenty-four tons of coal 
wasted in doing the work of six ; and as coal was 



Go ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

then six dollars a ton, there was over a hundred dol- 
lars thrown away just as if he had tossed the bank 
notes into the fire. I think you will agree there is 
more fun to be had out of money than to send it up 
chimney in this way. 

Now as to food. How much of each kind is enough 
for each person daily or weekly ? You must learn 
something about this, or you will be alternately pro- 
viding too much and having it spoil on your hands, 
and then scrimping to make up for it. Never waste, 
never stint, is the good housekeeper's rule, and the 
most wasteful extravagant people are sure to be the 
meanest in many matters. 

An experienced woman will tell you that in a fam- 
ily it is safe to allow, for each person consumes in a 
week, one quarter to one half pound of butter, one- 
half pound of coffee, two pounds of sugar, four pounds 
of meat, and three loaves of bread in some shape, 
beside one third of a pound of wheat or oatmeal, 
fruit and vegetables not being counted. 

Now as you wish to live expensively, or moderately, 
or economically, as suits your income, you can decide 
whether to allow Philadelphia butter at seventy-five 



A LADYS ACCOUNT BOOKS. 6 1 

cents a pound, Mocha at forty-five, prime cuts of beef at 
forty and sixty cents a pound, as they cost in cities, or 
the best country butter at thirty-five cents, sirloin and 
chops at twenty-five cents a pound, and Java at thirty- 
five, which are common prices. Or if, as you do, 
Anna Maria, you wish to spare as much money for 
pretty things and good times in other ways, you must 
learn thrifty ways of buying supplies of just as good 
quality at the seasons when they are cheapest, and in 
quantities when they are always lowest in price. You 
can have a better table, with more variety than most 
families, at a great deal lower cost, for nothing is less 
understood among Americans than how to make the 
most of food. I see plain families sitting down to 
salt fish and potatoes for dinner three or four times a 
week because meat is high, and they do not know 
how to serv^e a daintily browned steak from a cheap 
cut, or braise a bit of soup beef till it looks and eats 
as well as sirloin roast, or to make a rich and savory 
stew out of '' trimmings " of meats. They never can 
afford venison or game, though by watching the mar- 
ket they would sometimes find these as cheap as any 
meat, and they don't use maple syrup, or comb honey, 



62 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

or peach butter, or quince marmalade, and a dozen 
other nice things they might have if they knew how 
to buy suppHes cheaply, as they should. For you must 
give your folks ample variety, Anna Maria; not so 
much at one meal, but exchange from day to day if you 
want them well and strong and good humored. The 
human system needs variety, and you will find as a 
rule that the food which relishes best, nourishes best. 
What does a doctor order to make an invalid gain 
strength, but game, chicken, broths, ice creams, jellies, 
white grapes, and things which taste good because 
they are good. And to keep your people sound, 
merry and well, you want to give them just as good 
food as you can afford, plenty of it, and in variety. 
As I have told you, good food is not always what we 
call rich food, which generally means over-rich in 
butter or fat, eggs, wine, or spice. Yet it should be 
rich in some of these things to a degree, rich in nour- 
ishment for nerves and brain, phosphate for bones 
and teeth, fat to keep us warm and round the limbs, 
and gelatine to lessen the waste of the body in work. 
Poor cooking robs food of these qualities more or 
less. Poor food has lost them, to begin with. Nice 



A lady's account books. 63 

baked pears have fat and heat-making carbon in their 
rich syrup as truly as a slice of bacon or beef , but if 
the pears are woody and tasteless to begin with, or 
are baked watery or dried, the nourishment is out of 
them, and you might as well eat sawdust and sweet- 
ened water. Bread has phosphates and strength-feed- 
ing elements, but if it is *' slack-baked " or "sad,'' 
you turn it into such stuff that only the strongest 
stomach gains anything from it. 

Let us look into this matter of nourishing foods 
farther. 



v. — A BILL OF WASTE. 

TV /TY dear, I'm glad you've run in this way while 
^^ ^ the folks are at lecture ; take the little Shaker 
chair and let us be cosey. You would like to go over 
housekeeping accounts this evening when we are sure 
not to be disturbed ? The High School girls would 
poke fun at that as poor entertainment, I'm afraid, 
but you begin to find an interest in such things. 
The success, the history and the tragedy of some 
families lies between the covers of their account 
books. This ledger with the red and blue ruling is 
all we have left by the fairy godmother who used to 
have a trick of appearing on the hearth or by the 
wayside just in the right time to help distressed dam- 
sels, or succor the whole family. The old fairy 
never shows herself any more, but she is there in the 
wainscot, or with her ear at the chimney flue, and her 
hand turns the leaves of the family account book 

nights, and makes strokes of good or ill luck accord- 

64 



A BILL OF WASTE, 65 

ing to what she finds there. As we keep its pages 
well or neglect it, we will feel the tap of her angry 
wand, or we will find her blessing left beside the 
hearthstone. 

To show you in ugly, complete shape, what can 
slip away from one in the course of the year by easy, 
careless waste, let me give you some calculations 
I've amused myself with in a satiric way, when 
I wasn't able to hinder the waste going on around 
me. You know I have been out of health a good 
deal, and obliged to leave things in the hands of such 
help as we could find. If there has been a cross in 
my life it has been to be obliged to lie by and see 
substance and comfort thrown out of the windows by 
reckless stranger hands, without being able to prevent 
it. As the worry w^ould not be kept out my head, I 
used to try to reduce it to exact shape, and pencil 
calculations about it, for it was a satisfaction to know 
the worst ; just how much the stores laid in for the 
season would run short, just how many dollars of a 
moderate income were washed away in soap, starch, 
and firing, or flung away in spoiled food. The loss 
once known could be faced, regretted and dismissed. 



66 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

It always was a relief to know that five dollars a 
week were wasted \vhen I had feared twelve. Any- 
thing better than uncertainty. 

You know Mrs. Mills, who was laid by so long 
with lameness, so long after her fall on the ice last 
year, and you know Mary McGowan, the country 
girl she had to work for her. The way that girl got 
on was remarkable. Coming here three years ago 
without a second dress to her name, and hardly able 
to read, by making the most of every chance, and 
never spending a penny for anything she could pos- 
sibly have given her, she turns out on Sundays and 
afternoons as well-dressed, and, as her class say, well- 
appearing as any girl in town. She is intensely 
ambitious to get ahead in the world and improve her- 
self. She told Mrs. Mills one day that she hated 
work, and wanted to educate herself to be a lady 
physician or teacher; "something better than a hired 
girl in a kitchen," as she said, with an accent of 
bitter scorn. It was very well for her to wish to 
learn, and Mrs. Mills was glad to lend her books and 
see her find time to study, and talk with her about 
things she wanted explained. With three afternoons 



A BILL OF WASTE. 67 

a week and every evening to herself, there was time 
enough to study if she wished ; more than many a 
young man has had to fit himself for college. The 
ladies of the Mission Society used to "take an interest 
in her/' as they called it, and write her notes of 
advice and sympathy, send for her to visit them, uro-e 
her to write essays for the Sunday-school class, and 
advise her to read, write and study every chance. I 
used to wonder sometimes why it never entered the 
heads of these good women to exhort her to do her 
duty in the calling where she was, and the only one 
she was fitted for as yet, or why no one ever asked 
her gently if she was dealing fairly with the employer 
whose bread she ate and whose money she took. 
The ill-kept house, dirty and shabby about the front 
hall, the neglected grates and windows, the finger- 
marked doors, the disorderly rooms, all went 
down to Mrs. Mills' discredit, not that of the stout 
young woman engaged at her own terms to take 
care of the house. Mrs. Mills was ordered to keep 
still and get better, so she could only shut her eyes 
and bear the waste and disorder as best she might. 
You will know about it some day when you have a 



68 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

house of your own, if you ever have to depend on 
hired help. But I was going to tell you of the day 
when she first felt able to go into the kitchen and 
take things in hand. I found her sitting before the 
table, sorting and cleaning things from the pantry. 
May you never open the door on such a provision 
closet as that was ! the shelves left so white and clean, 
covered with paper which was a sample bill of fare 
for weeks — smeared with syrups, cold gravy, dripping, 
sifted with pearl hominy, sago, coffee grounds, meat 
scraps partly spoiled and giving such an odor as 
would soon spoil everything left in the closet. In 
one corner was the new tin dish pan full of old bread 
scraps, and under it the stone bread jar big enough 
to hold a child, and full of scraps, the cake box the 
same. They were put on the table, and I sat down 
to help sort the clean cut slices of bread and wedges 
of cake from those only fit for the chickens. The 
lower layers were mouldy, showing they had lain for 
w^eeks, and in the jar was a grown dead mouse, 
smothered by an avalanche of bread. There was a 
half-bushel of spoiled bread, including the mouse's 
vault, and we had the curiosity to weigh it. Twenty 



A BILL OF WASTE. 69 

pounds wasted of home made bread worth six cents a 
pound. I looked further. There was a joint of 
roast beef with blue mould on it and an odor quite 
conclusive of decay, that weighed three pounds and a 
half, worth seventeen cents a pound. Two pounds 
of fish gone stale in a covered dish, twenty cents. 
Three quarts of soup stock sour in the kettle by 
keeping in a warm place. Cake dry, and too dusty 
for use in puddings, at least a dollar's worth ; as 
much more burned ; the pickled cabbage spoiled by 
neglect, half a dollar ; two pounds of suet, mouldy, 
sixteen cents. Dripping spoiled at least three pounds, 
eighteen cents. And the grocery bills at least five 
dollars a week higher with the girl than before she 
came. Will you count it up ? 

Bread, 20 pounds, at 6 cents $1.20 

Beef, 3 1-2 " " 17 ** .59 

Fish, .20 

Soup, 3 quarts, at 9 cents .27 

Cake, 1. 00 

Cabbage, .50 

Dripping and suet, .34 

$4.10 
Waste in cooking, 10.00 

jJh.io 



70 ANNA MARIANS HOUSEKEEPING. 



Seven dollars a week waste that could be counted ; 
the list just reckoned being the loss for a fortnight. 
Add to this the socks, towels and handkerchiefs which 
blew off the bushes or were snowed under, the pillow 
cases and fine things mildewed, the china broken, 
napkins stained or scorched, and you will agree that 
Mary McGowan was a fortune to anybody by getting 
rid of her. I can't say she was any worse than a 
dozen other girls IVe known — alas ! — but the won- 
der in her case was, that neither she with all her 
ambitions and good feelings, nor the cultivated Chris- 
tian women who cared for her, ever thought there 
was want of principle in her wasting another's sub- 
stance so recklessly, and that other anything but a 
rich woman. Common honesty would keep her from 
filching seven dollars a week from Mrs. Mills' purse, 
but neither high sentiments or Christian teaching 
prevented her from wasting that and more for her 
employer, out of dislike and impatience of her employ- 
ment. I had rather some one had stolen the money 
if it were my case, for then it would have been of use. 
As it was, over twenty-five dollars a month was thrown 
in the garbage. Perhaps you think this an imaginary 



A BILL OF WASTE. 7 1 

case, but it is such a bill as a sick and sorry woman 
sat down to last winter, over the wanton waste of a 
" faithless help/' 

A gentleman once made an estimate of the daily 
loss in London, if each grown person wasted two 
ounces of bread, and that is so small a crust that you 
would never think about it. The amount came to 
many thousands of pounds; worth nearly $5000. 
Think what good this money would do the charities 
and hospitals of the city ; and remember that if so 
much bread is wasted one day, so much money must 
be paid out to replace it the next. 

Pray don't think I mean you should follow the old 
frugal habit of " eating a thing to save it," if there is 
more food on your plate than you care for. The very 
poorest economy I know of, is forcing more on your 
digestion than it needs, and spoiling your stomach to 
save a pennyworth of something. But there is no 
need of wasting the pennyworth either. Better learn 
tasteful ways of helping to food without loading 
plates, or serving more than a person is likely to 
want, and thus saving it in its best shape ; for 
it is worth much more neat and untouched to serve 



72 ANMA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

on the table again than to give cows or chickens. 

Two young housekeepers who were school friends 
when girls were comparing expenses. The families 
were the same and the style of living ; yet one spent 
$15 a month less than the other. 

" But how do you make it out, Sadie ? " implored 
her friend, almost with tears in her eyes. " I am sure 
I economize every way I can think of, yet you have a 
nicer house and table than we do on less money." 

" There's only one way to account for it, Helen," 
said the graver of the two, a girl who had been 
trained to care-taking by a good mother. " I do my 
own work as you do, and looking back on our ex- 
penses for a year, I don't think one cent's worth of 
our supplies has been wasted, or that it failed of being 
turned to the best account. I know there has not 
been a stick of kindling, or a scuttle of coal burnt, or 
a pound of flour, or a bit of soap, that wasn't put to 
its best use, nor a shilling's worth of anything 
scorched, torn, or lost in the washing, and it all counts 
by the end of the year. 

*' But you must be all the time thinking of little 
petty savings, that must narrow the mind in time, and 



A BILL OF WASTE. 73 

I never could bring myself to that in the world. I 
hope I never should." 

" Helen, you know my grandmother was one of the 
neatest, most economical souls ever made. She used 
to say that she could do a day's baking of bread, pies, 
and cake, and when all was made, the waste flour and 
scrapings would all go into the bowl of a spoon. It 
was true, for I Ve seen her mix and mould in the nicest 
way without, it seemed, strewing a grain of flour, or 
dusting the table. She taught her family this habit 
of nice dealing ; and mother taught us, till it comes 
like second nature to be careful. You don't think 
every moment about being attentive to a visitor who 
calls, for it's easy and natural to entertain. You play 
an air on the piano without thinking, because you 
have practised it, or you are nice about your dress be 
cause you can't help it. But I have heard coarse, 
unrefined people say they never could abide to be 
always thinking of their manners or their clothes, for 
they were sure they never could attend to anything 
else if they did. Folks can narrow their minds by 
always thinking of one thing, whether it is dress, or 
music, or how to save a few cents ; but that is no rea- 



74 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

son why we should be afraid to be well dressed, or 
fine musicians, or good economists." 

It is a great mistake to think that care or saving 
narrow the mind. Rather, they are the exercises in 
simple numbers which train it for the larger problems 
beyond. The motive for economy is what makes one's 
mind sordid, or the reverse. You want to spare that 
you may spend. Let me call one thing to your no- 
tice ; that lavish, careless people are the very ones who 
are mean in quiet ways. The woman v/ho disdains to 
save on her grocery bills, or to think whether a ton 
more coal is burnt in a season than is necessary, is the 
very one who will feel that she can't afford to sub- 
scribe for a magazine, or buy a book, but will borrow 
her neighbor's library books, and leave her to pay the 
fines for keeping them out over time, beside prevent- 
ing her from drawing a new one, which is more. She 
will allow, perhaps, a poorer acquaintance to pay for 
carriage fare and lunches, instead of insisting on 
paying her own as she ought ; she will let a plain sort 
of visitor come half a dozen miles to see her on busi- 
ness and go away faint and tired without offering the 
slightest refreshment ; she is the woman to drive past 



A BILL OF WASTE. 75 

poor Mrs. Martin hurrying over the long, hot walk to 
the station without five minutes to spare, and never 
think of offering the vacant seat in the carriage ; and 
she will see Alice Hathaway's Christmas work at a 
standstill weeks for want of the right colors in silk, 
nor ever dream of giving her the odd skeins left in her 
own basket. Small kindnesses do not occur to her. 
You know Mrs. Reeves has the name all over town 
of being a close woman because she will not pay high 
prices at the shops, won't buy eggs at fifty cents a 
dozen for everyday cookery, or take turkeys at twenty- 
eight cents a pound when she can buy them of the 
farmers for eighteen pence. Her servant girls de- 
nounce her stinginess because she puts them on allow- 
ance of fuel and provisions for the week's work, and 
looks after the soap and matches. She wears fifty-cent 
thread gloves whenever possible, instead of long Swed- 
ish ones at $2.50, beside a score of other economies 
which other ladies criticise as beneath them. But 
the washerwoman in her kitchen Mondays always finds 
her big cup of hot coffee and sandwich ready at eleven 
o'clock when she begins to remember that she ate a 
cold breakfast at six o'clock, and walked two miles 



76 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

before work. Old Miss Clay, who lives by herself in 
lodgings, is always asked to stay to tea when she calls, 
and has some cold chicken or plum pudding put up 
for next day's lunch. Daddy Mills, who is left alone 
now his wife and daughter are dead, has his washing 
and mending done every week and his poor old 
clothes kept in good repair. Half a dozen families 
have their magazine and weekly newspaper sent 
them out of the money saved on soap, starch and 
matches alone, and every year Mrs. Reeves buys a 
rare book, or new picture, out of the saving on coal 
bills. On a limited income she sends her sister's girls 
to school, and gives them expensive lessons in music 
and painting. No wonder she wears darned gloves 
and, as I heard her hired girl tell ours in the kitchen 
one evening, " never has a loaf of black cake in the 
house any more than if she was a washwoman herself." 
She knows how to put the greater before the less. 
Lecture's over. I hear Esquire Fitch and the min- 
ister talking along street as they always do. Would 
you have thought it was so late ? 



VI.— TWO TEAKETTLES. 

' I ^HREE miles and back from the Mattapan 
woods for palm willows and violets is good 
excuse for feeling rather tired on a fair spring day. 
You and I would both be better for a fresh cup of 
tea if it were not such trouble to make it. To fill the 
kettle, start the fire, wait for the water to boil, to 
rinse the teapot, get out the caddy and go through 
the service of makin^: tea for the entire familv is too 
much for tired creatures, and we will sit around from 
now till teatime, an hour and a quarter, drooping 
and half-comfortable, pretending to work and doing 
nothing well for want of that small refreshment. 

How much of their lives people waste going on 
with aching heads and flagging energies, doing their 
work only half as well and half as fast as they would 
after a cup of tea or soup had revived and freshened 
them. Your feet burn and are so swelled after the 



78 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

tramp that you are minded to give up walking for the 
rest of the season. Nothing is better for that ex- 
hausting pain than bathing the feet at once with hot 
water — a brief and effective remedy — only there is 
no hot water. 

I forgot ! We are at aunt Jane's, who has taken 
out rights of comfort large and small. The fire is low 
in the range, but there is a plenty of hot water in the 
boiler with its covering of felt which keeps the heat 
in night and day, beside a steaming kettle, ready for a 
foot-bath or fomentation, and, as I live ! a second tea- 
kettle, bright as new, holding three pints, and just off 
the boil, as old ladies say. 

Now for aunt Jane's nice ways, which are blissful 
to watch as the single kerosene lamp-stove is lighted 
with the touch of a match, and the small kettle falls to 
singing at once, and the little brown Japanese teapot 
comes out, kept for tea-drinking at odd times, the 
small caddy whose top holds just two spoonfuls of 
the leaf, and the old teaboard, a beech oval fitted in 
black lacquer rim — why, one makes tea for the pleas- 
ure of it, in such fashion. Drank from fluted teacups 
with a thin slice of fresh lemon floating in each, with- 



TWO TEAKETTLES. 79 

out milk or sugar, how delicate and inspiring it is ! 
They tell of people who put a drop of ottar of roses in 
the tea-caddy to flavor the pekoe, but aunt Jane 
knows a trick worth two of that, and mixes fresh 
apple petals, kin blossoms to those of the tea-plant, 
with her fine tea, which is scented like the costly 
" imperial *' teas that come through Russia. You 
know the delicious perfume of the highest qualities of 
tea comes from drying the flowers of the plant with 
the tender young leaves. But what use would the 
fluted " old pink '' china or the inlaid caddy have 
been without the ever ready kettle on the boil ? And 
who but aunt Jane would have the simple device of 
keeping two teakettles with constant relays of hot 
water ? In Mrs. Oliphant's story of The Curate in 
Charge^ charming as all her stories are, another aunt 
Jane, an old-fashioned gentlewoman, lays down the 
rule to her nieces that " in a good house the kettle is 
always boiling,'' ready for fresh tea which English- 
women like any hour of the day. Not only for tea, 
but for twenty other and more important uses, hot 
water is so constantly needed that the teakettle has 
become the symbol of home comforts, which are 



8o ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

the only reason and excuse for having homes at all. 
When you come to think of it, why shouldn't every 
house have two teakettles, and hot water on call ? 
Just because they don't think of it, or give that little 
time, that small sum of money and contrivance which 
insures life-long comfort on this and a score of other 
points. The cost of the second kettle usually stops 
people from providing it, for it is curious how the 
outlay of a few shillings will scare them from some 
convenience which would save them time, labor and 
trouble, at least once a day the year long. You see 
aunt Jane's large teakettle is an old-fashioned black 
iron one, which she bought in a small shop for thirty 
cents because it was old style, though it never had 
been used. Now the iron teakettle has the advan- 
tage over tin of holding the heat longer, and keeping 
water hot better. So Philena, the hired help, told us 
her grandmarm said, and we found the same thing in 
Count Rumford's Philosophy, which has a great many 
things of interest to housekeepers. It is curious how 
the grandmothers find out by experience what the 
philosophers discover by experiment. For my part, I 
find it impossible to do without either. Well, the big 



TWO TEAKETTLES. 8 1 

teakettle costing only thirty cents, aunt Jane could 
afford to buy a small, convenient tin one for forty 
cents to keep polished and on its good behavior for 
tea-making and sick-room use. When the children 
want to make paste for scrap-books, or Lucy wants to 
do up her lace ruffles, or somebody wants hot lemon- 
ade for a cold, there is never any waiting for boiling 
water, and waste of time and patience, because of the 
two teakettles, one of which is hot if the other 
isn't. 

Another convenience at aunt Jane's is the two 
dustpans and the chamber-broom hung in the back 
entry up-stairs. You know when one has been 
cutting out work in her room there will be litter, or 
when the boys are not careful to use the door-mat, 
they will leave traces of mud on the carpet, and what 
a trouble it is to run down-stairs after broom and 
dustpan. Aunt Jane said she never could afford to 
carry her one hundred and forty pounds of weight up 
and down-stairs every time a room needed extra 
sweeping, when a new broom cost thirty-five cents, 
and a second dustpan ten. While she was about 
it, she would have a dust-bin too, and if you lift the 



82 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

cover of that large box in brown linen and red trim- 
ming in the corner of the passage up-stairs, you will 
find it is an old tin cracker-box, to receive sw^eepings 
from the bedrooms. They are all swept thoroughly 
once a week of course, but between whiles all tran- 
sient sweepings go into this box, which is emptied at 
convenience. Aunt Jane counts that this second 
broom and pan which cost forty-five cents in all, have 
saved her going up and down-stairs at least five times 
a week for the last five years, or thirteen hundred 
times, and allowing that interest on the first invest- 
ment might make the price of her broom and things 
seventy-five cents, one cent fare saves her from going 
up and down seventeen times, and she considers it 
cheap. I know a family who went without a new 
dustpan ten years after they needed it, and made the 
old one do, because they never felt they could afford 
to pay half a dollar — country price — just for a con- 
venience. But the mistress said when she had to 
get a new one finally, and thought of all the back- 
aches and vexations about sweeping up she might 
have saved by getting it before, she felt too big 
a fool to stay in the family. There are savings which 



TWO TEAKETTLES. 83 

are found to be frightfully expensive in the end. 
The boys' bed stands in a corner of their room, 
away from the windows, and inconvenient to reach 
for making. You know how unwholesome it is for 
any one who sleeps at the back of a bed in such 
a position where no fresh air reaches it. Yet how 
tiresome it is to pull the bedstead out every night, 
and push it out of the way in the morning, the room 
being too small to allow its standing out. The cas- 
ters are too small. Get a large size with broad wood 
wheels, and you can push the bedstand back and 
forth easier than you can move a chair. The boys 
can pull it out at night into the best air in the room, 
and shove it back to give them room for dressing. 
You can mcfve it about as you like to tuck in tne 
clothes when making the bed, and leave it out to air 
when no one is in the room ; a touch will put it in 
place any time, and the broad tires will not wear the 
carpet like small iron ones. It is a trifle to see that 
the furniture in a house has easy casters ; but the 
difference in ease of moving and keeping it neat 
will surprise you. It's the principle of having two tea- 
kettles over again — that comforts are always cheap. 



84 - ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

I go frequently to a restaurant, where the dinner is 
good enough to tempt one, but there is always a 
moment of pain from the sharp squeak of chairs 
moved on the marble floor. It gives me a nervous 
dread from the moment of entering till that agonizing 
sound has pierced my ears and gone into the roots of 
my teeth. There is a little invention of rubber caps 
for chair legs which allows chairs to move on any 
surface without wear or sound, and public or private 
dining-rooms where the rubber-shod chairs are in use, 
have a sense of luxury most grateful. So many peo- 
ple use polished wood floors, I wonder that the rubber 
caps do not come into general use. When families 
for convenience live in the kitchen a good deal, or 
have painted floors for the dining-room, these sound- 
less chairs would be just as desirable as on tile pave- 
ments. The rubber caps cost five cents apiece, less by 
the dozen, fit any chair, and wear for years. I don't 
know a greater comfort to nervous mothers than to pro- 
vide a set for the chairs in use, and they save carpets 
remarkably. 

Boys are noisy creatures, that stamp about the 
house with the tread of a hose company, wear carpets 



TWO TEAKETTLES. 85 

and bring mud indoors insufferably. I don't know 
anything that wants to be rubber shod more than 
they, and the remedy for this noisy tread is to treat 
them as you would the chairs. Have the shoemaker 
glue a thin sheet of rubber on the sole of the heavy 
boots, and their power of disturbance is gone. The 
rubber does not make the feet damp with perspiration, 
because it does not cover the shoe ; it saves the soles 
from many a wetting, and mud does not stick to it as 
to leather, for which it seems to have an affinity. 
The rubber sole can't squeak, or clatter, and the only 
reason I can discover why every boy and girl in the 
country isn't rubber shod in this way is because it 
would make the shoes last too long for the interest 
of the shoe business. I remember having my shoes 
rubber soled when a schoolgirl, and how soundless 
and what a comfort they were. 

Did you ever happen to make a call in a house 
when you wanted to be sure your hair and bonnet 
were right after a windy walk, and can you ever for- 
get the dismay of finding no mirror either in the hall 
or parlor ? If I had not more than once found houses 
that were well furnished otherwise deficient in this 



86 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

respect, I would not mention the point. But some 
good people seem to think mirrors mere vanity and 
expense outside of a bedroom. I wish to plead for 
their right use and convenience about the house. A 
mirror should not be the friend of vanity, and it is a 
very poor, weak soul to which it so ministers. It 
should be, and is, the friend of all that is neat and 
becoming in dress and behavior, the silent, irresistible 
conscience which reflects our ill humors, awkwardness 
and very accidents, without fear or favor, and it is my 
private conviction there can hardly be too many such 
glasses about a house. 

It is said one reason why the French are such 
agreeable, well-bred persons is because large mirrors 
abound in their houses, reflecting their movements 
and making them conscious of awkward actions at 
once. There is truth in this, and there can hardly be 
a better educator in any room than a large mirror. 

If you can have things in the house at all to your 
liking, see that it is well provided wdth good glasses. 
One in the hall, certainly, for even the boys like to 
take a peep, and see that their hair is brushed as they 
fly out for play, and the young man with the gas bills 



TWO TEAKETTLES. 87 

likes to settle his collar and hat as he waits, and call- 
ers always want a glimpse of themselves as they pass 
in, unless they are carriage people, and have a dress- 
ing glass over the front seat. There should be one 
in each living room, not necessarily a large or promi- 
nent glass, but the largest in the sitting-room. 

The fashion of mantel mirrors is too good to be 
given up, as it reflects the attitudes of the group 
about the fire, and rebukes sprawling or awkward sit- 
ting. A glass not over a yard long can be hung side- 
wise and tilted to give a pretty good view of the inte- 
rior of a room. A wide glass hung on the wall oppo- 
site the boys' seats in the dining-room, would sooner 
or later make them aware ^of sundry tricks of manner 
you will try long to cure, unless they are brought to 
see themselves. Mirrors are not expensive compared 
with what they used to be ten years ago, and a second- 
hand one reflects just as well as a new one. I suggest 
that you look closely after the small savings, to allow 
plenty of "bright reflections on manners," as some- 
body calls glasses about your house. 

It is, after all, simply a case of two teakettles over 
again. 



VIL— A COMFORTABLE KITCHEN. 

T T 7H Y do people always build kitchens at the 

^ ^ back of the house ? 

I always said when my house was built it should 
have two fronts, one before and one behind, but no 
back door where pails, barrels and rubbish should 
gather, no muddy stoop or trampled ground about 
the steps. Instead, it should be like one sweet cot- 
tage I knew, whose paths led by croquet lawn and 
tennis ground at the side, to a surprise of trim grass- 
plots and flower beds behind the house, where a 
peach-tree was trained to shade the pantry window, 
from which one could pluck its leaves for flavoring 
custards and creams, and a Boursault rose climbed 
over the back door to the kitchen roof, when it 
laid its tresses of crimson cup-roses in the sun. A 
broad greensward, no less lovely that it was con- 
venient for bleaching, and a low spreading orchard 

88 



A COMFORTABLE KITCHEN. 89 

lay behind the flower plots, all secluded, fair and 
sweet as a walled English garden. 

Why should women and girls banish themselves to 
dull rear regions where all manner of rubbish is at 
home ? The other day I drove by a large farm with 
a big brick house, whose owner, a rich Dutchman, 
built the largest front room for the kitchen, because, 
he said, his wife spent most of her time there, and 
she should have the very best room in the house. 
Everybody said he was shrewd and right about it, 
though nobody thought of following his example. 

You want to make the kitchen pleasant, Anna 
Maria, so that you won't grow tired of staying in it 
day after day. Do not go to an extreme like some 
weak-minded, fanciful women who want pictures and 
book shelves in the kitchen, forgetful that steam and 
flies will do their best to spoil frames, glass and 
bindings; who want bits of carpet about, to catch 
one's feet and be always lying awry, and a lounge and 
work basket, to become scented with cooking. The 
clean, orderly kitchen is always attractive by its neat- 
ness, and all you need to add is a splint rocking- 
chair and boxes of sweet herbs and flowers at th^ 



90 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



windows. It wants a wide east w^indow for the morn- 
ing sun, and a south one for cheerfulness. 

Were I building a house the kitchen should not be 
wholly at the back, but project at the side so as to 
have one window for the pleasant front yard and the 
road. It should be lighted on three sides with a 
south porch shaded by awning in summer, to be taken 
down and give the full sun in winter, Its walls 
should be painted cream gray, pinky drab, or brown- 
ish buff, colors cheerful but not readily defaced, from 
which fly-specks and soil could be washed as from 
stone-china. Papered walls are objectionable in a 
kitchen, for the steam loosens the paper and it ab- 
sorbs smells and cannot be cleaned when soiled. 
Whitewash rubs off, and it costs more in three years 
to have whitewashing done than to paint the walls in 
the first place. The floor should be even and solidly 
laid of hard pine, oak or maple, the first finished in 
good yellow paint, or in the dark shellac polish like 
black walnut, and which cleans easily. Oak, maple 
or any of the hard woods need a light shellac finish 
which shows the grain and color of the wood. Do not 
have the floor oiled, however w iseacres may advise it. 



A COMFORTABLE KITCHEN. 91 

Oiled wood holds dust and lint, and always looks 
dark and damp. Oilcloth looks well, but has no ad- 
vantage over a well-laid floor. 

Do not have a high ceiling which gives you more 
space to heat in cold weather and more work in 
keeping walls clean the year round. Have windows 
to let down at the top and a ventilator in the chim- 
ney to draw off all the cooking odors. Learn to 
keep your kitchen and entries free from villianous 
smells of suds, of cooking cabbage, fish and beans, 
which give housework most of its vulgar associa- 
tions. It takes the soul out of the sweetest country 
walk by new-mown fields or blossoming orchards, to 
pass a house where the smell of frying doughnuts or 
corned beef informs the neighbors what the family 
are to have for dinner. There should be an airy little 
passage between kitchen and living rooms to keep 
odors of cookery from wandering about the house, 
and as you do your own work, you can afford ser- 
viceable improvements. 

The best housekeepers require but a small sup- 
ply of utensils, and you will find the fewer things 
you have to take care of the better. In fact, half 



92 ANNA MAKIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

the housekeeping aids advertised are more trouble 
than help. Among the things you need to save time 
and strength are these: A strong white wood table 
for baking and ironing with top at least 3x6 feet, and 
drawer, but no leaf, for it can be framed more firmly 
without one. Instead have a light, small table to 
move about easily where you want it, to hold the 
pans for shelling peas and paring apples, or to lay 
the starched things on ironing days. Also, have a 
broad drop-shelf with strong hinged brackets to fold 
back underneath, so that it can hang against the wall 
when not in use. A wire cupboard should hang over 
the cooking table with spice, soda and small things 
used in cookery. Do not have the cupboard for iron 
ware under the sink where more than a suspicion of 
dampness, close odors, grime and black beetles is apt 
to gather, and where your back must ache stooping for 
what you want. Have the sink, whether of iron or wood, 
neatly painted on the underside, and supported by 
stout metal brackets without any casing, leaving the 
floor underneath open and dry, as well as making 
the sink easier to work at. Have a nice painted 
woodbox beside the stove with a hinged half-cover^ 



A COMFORTABLE KITCHEN. 93 

and a cupboard above for iron ware. This brings 
cooking utensils in easy reach, where you want 
them without stooping. The upper shelf in this is 
the place for flat-irons, where they will be out of dust 
and rust. They are always in the way on the mantel, 
and grow rusty in closets away from the fire. 

It will save half your strength to keep things used 
together close to each other, in convenient range ; the 
poker, stovelifter and hearthbroom close to the stove 
on nails just the height of your hand, to save stoop- 
ing for them, the cooking-table next the pantry door, 
that you need not cross the room for everything 
wanted in baking, and the tubs, washbench, rubbing- 
board, clothespins and clothes-stick all in one large 
closet. It is a relief to find the broom and dustpan 
always together, and the duster at hand. The china 
closet should be between dining-room and kitchen, 
with a large slide window opening on a broad shelf 
next the sink, in the corner adjoining, if you want 
the greatest convenience in washing dishes and put- 
ting them away. One little point which greatly 
adds to ease and safety in going about a kitchen in 
a hurry, is to have the corners of all tables and 



94 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

shelves rounded, that you need not run against them. 

All the woodwork of doors, windows and base- 
boards ought to have the plainest mouldings, for 
scrolls and headings catch the dust and are hard to 
clean. Be sure to have brackets at different heights 
each side the window for shelves which may be 
shifted as your plants need. Shallow boxes of curled 
parsley and sweet herbs should be growing in the 
warm, moist air of the kitchen, which often suits 
plants better than any other part of the house. Have 
the clock on a shelf with your account sheet and some 
good receipt books in easy reach, and a light tool box 
in the closet, with clawhammer, screwdriver, wrench, 
gimlet, a ball of string and assorted nails, tools you 
can buy for ten cents apiece, which will be no end of 
help on occasions. 

You want a closet for tubs, brooms, pails and such 
large things, a closet three feet deep at least, with 
door or doors to open the entire front, so that things 
can be taken out, and it can be swept or cleaned easily. 
Nothing like dark closets and corners behind doors 
for collecting mold and dust. If you are bent on 
doing work well and easily, you will have these im- 



A COMFORTABLE KITCHEN. 95 

provements made as you are able. Your father will 
soon see that it pays to supply a neat, economical 
housekeeper with conveniences, and it costs no more 
to frame a closet with cheap doors than with lath and 
plaster. One thing more, and that is a firkin, or large 
pail with tight wooden cover for garbage. Now 
remember, no decent kitchen ever has a sour, ill- 
smelling receptacle for slops, and leavings of any 
kind ' — no decent house has ugly, ill-smelling things 
anywhere on the premises. 

How are you going to help it, do you ask ? 

Unless your scraps are to be saved for a cow or 
pig, burn all leavings and parings, the refuse from 
tables, and the scrapings as fast as made. Open all 
the back drafts of the stove, put the leavings on the 
hot coals and let them dry and burn, which they will 
do in a few minutes. With the drafts open there will 
be neither smell nor smoke. If the scraps must be 
saved, have a waste pail with a tight cover, or a cov- 
ered firkin large enough to empty a panful of parings 
into in a hurry without dropping any on the floor. 
Never pour slops with the waste for it sours and fer- 
ments sooner. Have the pail emptied twice a day 



96 ANNA MARIANS HOUSEKEEPING. 

in warm weather and scrubbed with water and a few 
turns of an old broom, which cleans it without touch- 
ing your hands to it. But if rinsed, drained and dried 
in the sun even your waste pail will be as neat, whole- 
some and well kept as any of your belongings. 
Every washday all slop pails and barrels should be 
scrubbed with hot suds and a broom outside and in, 
scalded and aired, when I think you will not have 
to shrink from them as disagreeable subjects. Kitchen 
furnishing shops supply large tight garbage firkins 
neatly painted with covers, which never need be ob- 
noxious to sight or smell. A sour waste barrel in a 
corner always foul with droppings is not to be toler- 
ated, for it is enough to cause fever in warm weather. 
You must not consider it beneath you to look after 
such details of house and yard, to see that everything 
in sight or out of sight is wholesome, clean and safe 
as it is possible to be. You have been taught to de- 
spise the slovenliness which wears a good dress and 
briofht ribbons with unwashed skin and careless 
underclothing; learn also to despise and dread the 
housekeeping which is satisfied with pretty parlor 
and chambers, while the closets are unswept and 



A COMFORTABLE KITCHEN. 97 

musty, and the back sheds and cellar full of half- 
decayed rubbish. Dread it because such neglect 
causes ill health. Do not rest till your working part 
of the house is as pleasant as the well-furnished part. 
Of all rooms in a house, I delight in a well-kept 
kitchen, for no other room is so given up to good 
w^orks and consummate cleanliness, so washed and 
scoured and polished, till it smells of the sanctity of 
neatness. When the w^estern sun shone broad and 
merry over the sparkling window, yellow floor and 
white tables, when a savor of sweet marjoram and 
lavender from the window-boxes was in the air, and 
the shining stove with its bright teakettle and sim- 
mering pans was a shrine of good cheer, I have taken 
portfolio and books out in my kitchen to the light- 
stand and little shaker chair to enjoy the sparkling 
humor, the w^arm home radiance, the neatness and 
seemliness which made the place akin to poetry and 
clear thoughts. It was not too homely to read Ten- 
nyson's songs or Blackwood's Magazme in, with the 
fresh plants in the window, the pears baking to rich 
syrup in the oven, and the black cat with golden 
eyes, purring in her satin fur in the best of the sun- 



gS ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

light. Didn't I learn ^''Mariana in the Moated Grange,^^ 
and " Where Claribel low lieth^^^ and Bayard Taylor's 
Arab songs from the book propped open on the ironing 
table, catching a stanza between the ruffles of a white 
skirt or the turn of a sleeve ? Nor was it less tidy of 
a morning, when one was rushing round to get early 
breakfast, for sister Maggie knew how to keep order 
in the stir; the stove was brushed clean, the floor 
swept, the kettles nice about their jackets, the dishes 
ranged in order on the table, not dropped out of 
chaos, and everything was clean in spite of use. It 
was pleasant baking days, preserving days and Satur- 
days, nor absolutely tedious washing days, for Mag- 
gie had the knack of keeping things at their best. As 
she crossed a disorderly room the chairs went into 
place, the baskets into their closet, half a dozen 
unnecessary pots and pans retired to the storeroom, 
and the contents of sink and tables fell into array, 
the blind was pulled straight and the rug set smooth. 
Slack women looked on in admiration and talked of 
*' her gift " for housekeeping, as if every mortal with 
head and hands could not train them to see at a glance 
what needs to be done, and to do it as quickly. 



VIIL— TO CLEAN AND TO KEEP CLEAN. 

'TpHE neighbors who remember her, speak of 
^ my grandmother as a pattern housekeeper of 
the old style. With eleven children, a large circle 
of acquaintances to entertain and a fastidious hus- 
band, she managed to do and direct everything for 
house and family in the nicest manner, without los- 
ing her serenity, or being other than delicately neat 
in dress. In the Yankee phrase, "dirt wouldn't stick 
to her.'' Therefore I have always had great respect 
for one of her favorite maxims handed down, that 
*'one keep-clean was worth a great many make- 
cleans." 

Still one must make clean before she can keep 
clean, and Irish Katy has not left the kitchen in the 
glorious neatness we were talking about last time. 
I don't envy you the housecleaning, but if bringing 
purity, order and safety into the dark corners of the 

99 



lOO ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

world is a heavenly mission, yours is one — and where 
should such purity and safety begin if not in one's 
own home? You have read of Miss Octavia Hill, 
the English lady who rented tenement houses in the 
worst part of London, and had them cleaned, taking 
part, I believe, in the scrubbing and whitewashing 
with her own hands, to give the wretched poor a 
glimpse of that cleanliness which is next to godliness. 
It was one of the finest missions of the century, and 
I have thought some homes where education and 
taste had place, needed a similar visitation. One 
would think the pictures would leave the walls, the 
books come down from the shelves, the tidies and 
knickknacks get up and shake off the dust, in homes 
kept with the negligent half-order, which is all people 
seem to attempt now, their time being too much taken 
up with Kensington work, Tennyson clubs and 
"socials," to see that their houses are pleasantly or 
wholesomely kept. They let the poisonous dust 
gather under the beds and in corners, allow contagion 
to breed in vile, damp places left by slops, and food 
becomes tainted in their close closets, their very 
garments gather musty odors while they are taken 



TO CLEAN AND TO KEEP CLEAN. 101 

up with finer things as they suppose — as if one read 
poetry with a face unwashed ! There is more sincere 
refinement in the clean bare floors, spotless pantries 
and sweet, airy bedrooms of plain homes where 
pictures and books are luxuries, than in fine houses 
where everything is attended to save the cardinal 
virtues of health and neatness. Thorough cleanliness 
in every room and corner, from doorstep to roof-tree, 
is what you must exact before you lay pretty car- 
pets, hang illuminated mottoes, and fill the windows 
with flowers and the shelves with books and china. 
Nor is this strict neatness going to take up all your 
time and strength as foolish women try to persuade 
you. A girl or woman in good health ought to be 
equal to taking care of a small house or flat in the 
best manner and have half her time left for study, 
visits and needlework. Women find housework tire- 
some and dragging because they never half learn it ; 
and partly because they make up their minds to hate 
it as some girls hate the piano. I should think 
women would hate housekeeping the way some of 
them do it. Can't you take it up for something bet- 
ter, a gracious ideal that is to be the reality of your 



102 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

artist friends' pictures and your favorite authors' 
kindliest scenes, where everybody who enters will 
find himself at his best, under its sunny conditions 
of comfort? 

The first step toward this is, to make things clean ; 
the next is to learn how to keep them so. 

Katy meant to leave the kitchen neat, for she 
mopped the floor, blacked the stove, and wiped the 
windows. Put on your oldest calico (let it be a 
clean one) and your sweeping-cap, and we will see 
how much is to be done after her. You don't want 
to imitate the nonsense of novel heroines, who 
always appear in the kitchen with white collar and 
spotless cuffs. A well bred woman never wears any- 
thing not suited to her work. You may put on your 
lily-white cuffs after the cleaning, but a white hand- 
kerchief round your neck to keep the dust out, and 
plain sleeves, are the proper dress to-day. Have 
everything eatable covered closely and put away, 
tables and sink cleared, plenty of hot water, two 
pails, an old broom and a clean new one, two scrub- 
bing brushes, a stumpy whisk broom for cleaning 
windows, a stout nut picker or sharp skewer of hard 



TO CLEAN AND TO KEEP CLEAN. 1 03 



V 



wood to get the dirt out of cracks, plenty of cloths 
for wiping glass and paint. Old flannel or merino 
underwear make soft mop-cloths which wring easily. 
You must have good tools to work with, and a well 
set mop and large cloths will do the cleaning in half 
the time of poor ones. If you haven't old cloths 
enough, it pays to buy a yard or two of coarse towel- 
ing for floor cloths, and sixpenny unbleached cotton 
for wiping pahit. For your cleaning outfit you will 
want: — 

A bath-brick which will cost 5 cents, a peck of 
clean sand, 10 cents, a cake of mineral soap, 8 cents, 
a pound of whiting 5, pound of washing soda 5, a can 
of solid lye or potash, 10, a quart of cheap ammonia, 
25, mop, 50, broom, 25, two whisks, 10, flannel, 25, 
2 yards of towelling, 20, 2 yards of cotton, 13 ; in all 
$4.16, say $5, to allow for difference in prices. You 
would pay this for the poorest servant one fortnight, 
or for a charwoman half a day each week in two 
months, who would not do your work nearly as well, 
and would waste twice the supplies you will want in 
the time. I make this little calculation to show that 
you save enough to allow yourself every needed 



104 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



help which women are apt to stint themselves. 
All things ready, sweep the cobwebs down with 
your clean broom which will not leave a streak along 
the walls, get up on your step-ladder, and with brush 
and dust-pan clear the dust from door and window 
tops, and dust the mouldings with the whisk broom. 
Brush the walls, and dust the base-boards with the 
broom, then sweep the floor with light strokes without 
flourishing to raise a dust, and instead of stabbing at 
the skirting of the wall, run your broom along it, 
which will clean all the dust out, a point which makes 
much of the difference between well-swept rooms and 
careless ones. Use the whisk in the angles of the 
floor and mouldings, where the dust and fluff by long 
lying have felted together, or a sharp skewer or 
steel pick will perhaps be the only thing to take them 
out. You will find dust caked in corners, where Katy 
washed the floor without thorough sweeping or 
thorough rinsing after. Around the carelessly kept 
threslipld are likely to be collections of this kind 
which must be scraped out with an old dull knife, kept 
for cleaning. Sweep with windows open if the 
weather will allow, and when through, shake the door 



TO CLEAN AND TO KEEP CLEAN. 1 05 

mat, brush out the entry and porch, and go out of 
doors while the dust settles, to give your lungs fresh 
air. Sweeping is the best exercise for chest and 
arms. English ladies of rank wishing fine forms 
as well as pretty faces have taken to brooms and bed 
making to develop their arms and shoulders. 

Time yourself to do this sweeping in fifteen min- 
utes, then sit down for a five minutes' rest. You can 
train yourself to do all the work of a house without 
fatigue, by taking short rests at intervals. So take 
the shaker chair while we talk about dust and what it 
is made of. 

House dust is minute particles of soil from 
the streets, brought in by the feet, or sifted through 
door and window casings, fine ashes from the fire, 
mixed with minute scales of skin from our bodies, and 
fluff from clothing and carpets. These particles, 
nearly invisible themselves, collect in such amount 
that they soon show in an unswept room, in the locks 
of lint which gather under tables, along walls, and 
undisturbed places. This waste goes on day and 
night, grinding of dust from roads, wear of clothes 
and carpets, fine dust flying from fires and atoms from 



io6 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

human bodies. It irritates the lungs to breathe ; ever 
so little damp begins a ferment in it, poisoning the 
air, and the only safe way to dispose of it is to sweep 
it up and burn it. Don't throw sweepings about the 
yards or vaults, but burn them instantly, or if that is 
not convenient, keep them in a barrel to burn the 
first chance. This grime on the paint left by Katy's 
careless washing is the sediment of dust in the water 
and dust settled in the steam of cooking, which if 
not often aired and washed, leaves the dingy look of 
frowsy kitchens. 

Begin to wash doors and base-boards and you will 
see the annoyance dust harbors. In the mould- 
ings of doors and windows run the dust-lice, which 
gnaw books, paint and wood, and are ready to fall 
into food. Smeary paint invites that ugly moth,. which 
delights in nothing so much as a greasy spot in a 
warm room, and which will lay its eggs next in the 
dining-room carpet. In that dusty corner behind the 
woodbox, a venturous ant has made her nest, and 
some July morning you will be surprised by her emi- 
grant family in the store room, especially if spilt sugar 
and meal are left to tempt them there. Under the 



TO CLEAN A.ND TO KEEP CLEAN. 107 

sink, in dampness and grease, water beetles and 
roaches increase like wharf rats. All these and more 
in swarms I have found in the melancholy process of 
clearing after a kitchen girl who "could not be at 
the throuble '' of keeping things entirely clean. These 
insects thrive on refuse and they cannot be regarded 
as safe or agreeable things in a kitchen, running 
over food and leaving corners offensive with their 
traces. 

After you have swept and dusted everything by 
brushing it, begin cleaning. If you have a painted 
wall to wash, the best and easiest way is to close 
doors and windows, take the cover off a boiler of hot 
water on the fire, and leave the steam to settle in the 
room for ten minutes. Steam is penetrating, and it 
will soften the spots and soil so that nothing will be 
easier than to wash, rinse and wipe the wall yard by 
yard. Steaming leaves doors and windows easy to 
clean, but to have paint look clear and bright, it must 
be rinsed with clean water, and wiped quickly dry. 
Don't take a pailful and scrub with it till it thickens 
with dust, but use a large tin basin, and change the 
rinsing water as often as it grows cloudy, and as the 



io8 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

wiping cloths grow damp, rinse and dry them by the 
fire or in the sun, while you use fresh ones. If the 
paint is soiled with finger-marks, rub with mineral 
soap, remembering it is not the paint you want to get 
rid of, but the soil. Or, pour two tablespoonfuls of 
ammonia into the basin of warm water and rinse well 
after it. Old paint, especially old grained paint, is 
brightened by using a tablespoonful of potash solu- 
tion in a basin of water, swabbing the woodwork 
with it swiftly, and rinsing with cold clear water 
without wiping. Delicate paint is best cleaned with 
whiting on a moist flannel, wiping with a wet cloth 
and drying quickly. By using a swab to wet the 
paint a few minutes before you begin to clean it, 
scrubbing mouldings with a large brush or the whisk 
broom, always rubbing with the grain of the work, 
not across, rinsing without slop and keeping plenty 
of clean dry cloths to wipe with, you will not find the 
cleaning very dreadful business. 

The paint done, wash the window frames, taking 
care to wet them all over to soak the dirt, scrub- 
bing the top and lower edge with strong suds, scraping 
with a knife the ancient deposits of grime and flies, 



TO CLEAN AND TO KEEP CLEAN. 1 09 

finishing with a wash of potash water to extract the 
soil. The soap, sand and potash are for the unpainted 
part of the sash and casings only, for each will ruin 
paint. And now comes the trying part of your work, 
to clear out the corners of each pane of sash, and the 
grooves of moulding. The steel nut picker comes in 
play here, followed by the whisk which will wash out 
corners better than anything else. Scrub round the 
window lock on the middle sash, clear all the dust 
from it with the pick, leave no crevice about your 
window that is not absolutely free from dust and 
smooth. Very likely a lazy painter has not dusted 
the corners of the sash perfectly before painting, and 
they look woolly: clear it with the pick. If there is 
paint on the glass, scour it off with mineral soap, or 
touch it with strong potash water, and then scour. 
Use no soap to wash glass, but rub greasy spots with 
whiting or ammonia, then rinse, drain and wipe with 
dry clean cotton cloths. Keep old pillow cases and 
skirts for this use, and for dusters. You can afford 
to take time and pains over such work, for it will 
never be troublesome again while your housekeeping 
lasts. 



no ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



Now for scouring tables, chairs and shelves, all 
which in a kitchen should be unpainted, to clean more 
perfectly. Your tables with white pine top and 
chestnut frame, the chairs of varnished chestnut, the 
shelves of clear inch pine, should always after the old 
English standard of good housewives, be clean enough 
to show the grain of the wood as when first planed. 
To keep them so you must scour them after the good 
old fashion with soap and sand, for there is nothing 
like sand to clean and smooth the grain of wood. 
Take out the drawers and wash them, for Katy has 
left finger-marks inside, and crumbs, till they are not 
fit to keep clean cloths and utensils in. Now the 
potash water comes in use. From the can chip out a 
tablespoonful, dissolve in an iron kettle of boiling 
water, and you have a willing servant which will do 
all sorts of hard, disagreeable work for you. It is 
strong and effective, and you must use it with very 
great care, for a drop of this solution will take the 
color out of your dress, and eat holes in it; will take 
the paint off wood, remove grease from wood, iron, or 
stone like m.agic, kill bad smells, sweeten dark, damp 
corners, whiten dull floors, remove rust, brighten zinc. 



TO CLEAN AND TO KEEP CLEAN. Ill 

in short, I never can keep house without this trusty 
chemical. Never let your hands touch it, for it will 
wrinkle and make them sore. Apply it with a swab, 
and rinse the article on which it is used at once. 
Keep the kettleful of the solution hot to cleanse cook- 
ing utensils ; one spoonful of this in a basin of 
water will be strong enough to wash paint or most 
woodwork with. Use it to take finger-marks from 
table-drawers ; scour and rinse them and set to drain 
in the sun to sweeten, till every trace of damp has 
disappeared. Turn the table upside down and clean 
the soil and fly marks there. You will probably find 
spider-webs and eggs in that coigne of vantage, and 
a colony of cockroaches, to dislodge which, swab the 
cracks and joints well with hot strong potash; scrub 
and rinse, and when dry, apply plenty of kerosene 
with a feather, saturating all cracks. The smell soon 
disappears, but no insects will take a fancy to keep 
house there again. 

Swab the zinc under the stove with potash to clean 
it, letting the solution stand a few moments before 
rinsing off. Next collect all jars, pans and cooking 
ware for a grand cleaning. They are not smooth to 



112 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



the touch, nor do they smell sweet to the practised 
senses of the true housekeeper. Washed in grimy dish- 
water, wiped on doubtful towels, left in an airless 
cupboard or pantry, they do not belong to our order 
of thorough neatness. There is a trace of sweetmeats 
in the apple-sauce crock, and a pasty rim in the yeast 
jar, while hot lard has been suffered to soak into a 
third. The tin pans have black seams from which 
the grease can be scraped with a pin, the sugar firkins 
are smeared outside, whatever they may be within, 
and the starch, sago and other nest-boxes are not 
nice to handle. Take the jars first : put each in the 
kettle of potash upside down for five minutes. Take 
out carefully into a large pan of clean hot soapsuds, 
wash with a dish mop, scour sticky spots, drain, wipe, 
and set where the sun will shine full into it out of 
doors or at an open window. In winter set over the 
hot stove to air. Not till this course of purifying 
is gone through after the reign of a careless servant is 
kitchen ware fit for handling. 

The tins come next for a thorough washing and 
sunning, to be polished at leisure another day. Then 
the firkins are emptied, swabbed outside and around 



TO CLEAN AND TO KEEP CLEAN. II3 

the rim with hot potash, scoured with sand and soap, 
rinsed and set in the sun. The starch boxes the 
same. The pantry shelves if unpainted are cleaned 
with sand, first taking out grease spots with potash. 
The floor is washed, all spots of dried dough, flour 
and meal soaked and scraped off with that invaluable 
old knife. While the pantry dries with door and 
window wide open to air it, wash the rest of its con- 
tents, cleaning the flour bin or barrel of spots with a 
moist cloth and mineral soap without wetting it much 
and then wipe with a damp cloth. Wash all pegs 
and nails and hooks in the wall, swabbing them with 
a basin of hot potash, for they often become so crusted 
with fly-marks and greasy fingers, that they are not 
fit to hang clean things on. The flat-irons will be 
none the worse for a dip in potash to take any grease 
off, washing and drying them on the stove. Then put 
the potash in your largest kettle and boil the other 
kettles, sauce-pans, frying and bakepans in the lye, 
ten minutes apiece, when you will find all the greasy 
crust on the outside scrape and scale off, and a little 
scouring with a brush and sand will leave all your 
"kitchen battery'* smooth, innocent, and safe to touch, 



114 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

as even the menial things should be in your kitchen. 
The old-fashioned story of the two maiden ladies 
whose kettles and fr}dng-pans were so clean *'you 
could get up from hemming a cambric handkerchief 
and rub your fingers on the bottom of each one with- 
out soiling the work when you came back," was 
always delightful to me, since I first heard it as a 
child. And though I never could bring my gridirons 
and saucepans to the same polish of neatness, still 
it has been a worthy model to aim after. As old 
*^ granther Hale " out in Tioga County used to saj;;^ 
*When I find anything too clean for me in this world, 
I can't expect to go to a better one." 



IX.— IN MY LADY^S CHAMBER, 



'nr^HERE are two things I tell my girls it is impos- 
-■- sible to be too particular about," said a good 
housekeeper. "One cannot be too nice about 
washing dishes or doing chamber work." And this, 
from one of the most graceful of hostesses used to 
entertaining the best company of the State — army 
officers and foreigners of distinction her guests — 
deserves your consideration. 

" I always know," said another woman of the world, 
"whether the lady of the house is old-fashioned 
enough to look after the comfort of her guests herself, 
by the state of the toilet ware. If that is nice, the 
mistress has seen to it herself, for that is one thing 
servants will not do properly, unless her eye is on 
them." I will go farther, for it seems as if few mis- 
tresses themselves know how to provide the niceties 

of the bed-chamber in a house. There will be a set 

115 



ii6 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

of inlaid furniture, pillow overlays, ruffled and laced, 
a pink china toilet set, decorated splasher and mats, 
in the best bedroom of course, but how is the bed 
fitted and when was it aired, and is there a covered 
pitcher and glass for drinking water, and a soap 
dish with drainer that won't let your French soap dis- 
solve in it, and a table you can write on comfortably, 
or a footstool of any sort, or a dozen other things for 
comfort. If the spare chamber has these, how is it 
with the family sleeping rooms, and your own bed- 
room, Anna Maria, if left to a careless servant or 
inexperienced girl. 

Let me advise you to read Florence Nightingale's 
Notes on Nursing at once, in the beginning of your 
housekeeping, to learn the reason for the strict care 
of bedrooms for sick or well. The human body throws 
off by insensible perspiration, and by the breath, 
every night several ounces of waste animal matter, 
that has served its purpose, and which the system is 
in haste to get rid of. This waste is thrown off in a 
diffused form and is hardly noticed in a single night, 
being mostly absorbed by the night clothes and bed- 
ding. If these are hung in a draft of air, much of it 



IN MY lady's chamber. II7 

passes off, and if the sun shines on them out of doors, 
that has still more effect in changing the waste to a 
harmless form, which we mean by saying the sun 
" sweetens '^ things. But if the day clothing is left in 
a heap, the bed just as you get out of it, and the night- 
gown rolled up or hung in a close closet so that little 
air reaches them, the waste decomposes, and gives 
the unpleasant beddy odor complained of in sleeping 
rooms. Well may they have a disagreeable smell, 
for day by day a substance has been allowed to 
gather in the room, and penetrate everything there 
which if collected in mass, so as to be seen and 
recognized would be shocking and offensive to the 
last degree. 

This waste which saturates clothes and bedding is 
absorbed again into your body which is more sensitive 
to such influences when asleep than awake. You 
breathe it, your skin absorbs it by those myriad, mys- 
terious vessels of which it is full as a sponge, and the 
blood receives this waste again, to the injury of your 
health and complexion. You must make a habit to 
get rid of this, taking off all the clothing at night, 
especially that worn next the skin, and hanging each 



ii8 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

piece separately where the air can reach it, and by 
airing the bed and bedclothes every day, giving them 
frequent days in the sunshine out of doors. The 
Southern method is a good one as told me by an old 
Louisiana housekeeper, who said that once a week, 
on Saturday, all the mattresses and bedclothes were 
put out in the sun, on frames for the purpose, and 
left all day, to be made up wholesome and sweet with 
the weekly fresh linen at night. This is a nice practice 
which all ought to adopt some sunny day each week. 
When you get up in the morning, take off the 
blankets and spread them on chairs where the sun 
will fall on them if possible, throw both sheets off to 
leave the mattress to air, open the windows wide, and 
put the pillows in them to sun. Hang your night- 
dress where the air will blow through it. If you must 
wear an undervest all the time, have a change for 
night, and let me tell you, this little habit of changing 
the clothing next the skin frequently, has more to do 
with the complexion than you are aware. A girl who 
has an irritable skin will find a great difference in 
the clearness of her face if she puts on a freshly aired 
suit of merino every night and morning. By using 



IN MY lady's chamber. II9 



the skin to these changes and to bear the air a few 
minutes daily, you lessen the risk of taking colds and 
neuralgias, all your life. 

As long as you have your mattress off, we may as 
well examine the bedstead a little. How often do 
you thoroughly dust it, springs, slats, corners, and 
mouldings, side rail and head-board, as well as the 
rest ? Lay newspapers on the floor to catch the dust, 
and go over the bedstead, getting the last grain of 
dust out of every crevice, using pick and whisk broom 
or long bristle brush for the purpose, then if it has 
not been very carefully kept, touch the sockets for 
the slats with a swab wet in hot strong lye, setting a 
basin underneath that none may drip on the floor. 
Wash the ends of the slats with a scrubbing brush in 
strong suds, and then dip them in hot lye, and stand 
the boards in the sun to dry; srwab every crack or 
rough knot in the slats and inner work of the bed- 
stead with the lye, and when dry, saturate them with 
kerosene, putting it on with a feather, and apply it to 
every crevice of the mouldings and carvings. Polished 
wood always looks better for an application of kero- 
sene, but this is for another purpose, to prevent any 



120 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

possibility of future annoyance, for take one thing to 
heart about your beds and bedrooms, that where dust 
lies there will be insects. Dust the bedstead 
thoroughly at least twice a week if not every day, 
brush the slats and under parts at the weekly sweep- 
ing, and go over them with kerosene twice a year at 
house-cleaning times. Prevention is better than cure, 
and with this care you may insure yourself against a 
housekeeper's worst annoyances. 

Why do we use the lye and kerosene both on the 
slats and rough places? Because insects select 
cracks and roughnesses of wood to lay their eggs, 
and harbor there, and the potash cleanses and removes 
all traces of them, while the kerosene soaks into the 
wood and keeps them away in future. 

Now are the baseboards and corners of the room 
free from dust ? I suppose of course the mantel and 
bureau are tidy, but how is it behind the glass, and 
on the wash-stand shelves, and in the corners of your 
closets ? How do the bureau drawers look inside ? 
It is rather dreadful to open bureaus after some 
young people have used them; for the lining shows 
ornamental touches in the shape of dark finger 



IN MY lady's chamber. 121 

marks, smears of hair oil and cold cream, dust of 
powder where one upsets the powder-box, fluffs 
from hair brushes and stray combings, old soiled rib- 
bons, notes, rusty hair pins, under the paper lining 
on which their w^hite neckties and fichus were laid. 
Charming isn't it and traces by which a lady would 
wish to be known. Remove the contents, take out 
the bureau drawers, and turn them upside down on a 
large newspaper or sheet on the floor to catch the dust, 
then brush the corners out with a whisk and wipe 
with a damp cloth. If soiled with grease or finger 
marks, remove these with mineral soap, or soda 
water, made by dissolving a bit of washing soda the 
size of a walnut in a gallon of boiling water. Rinse 
this off with a wet cloth, and sun the drawers an hour 
or two to make them w^holesome, delicate, and pure 
as the nest of a girl's ribbons and laces ought 
to be. 

When dry, line each drawer, large and small, even 
the comb cases, with clean manilla paper, fitting it 
nicely in the corners. You can afford to buy a quire 
of strong nice paper for this use, as one lining ought 
to last a year or two. White paper takes the color 



122 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



out of silk things by the trace of lime left in bleach- 
ing it. 

Now you can put your scent satchets and muslin 
bags of rose leaves and sweet clover among the 
handkerchiefs and fresh clothes, with a happy feeling 
that they are in keeping. 

Keep comb and brush in a separate box or case, 
fitted with paper lining which must be often 
changed. 

I will suggest that a hair brush which is washed 
once a week, as all brushes should be, first with 
ammonia and then rinsed with alum water and dried, 
is a more becoming neighbor to a young lady's toilet, 
among her bows and laces, than the specimen too 
often found. 

Keep the toilet bottles wiped, the pincushion 
dusted, and the toilet mats beaten and aired, though 
nothing which will not wash really has any place 
there. 

The washbasin, and all the ware about the wash- 
stand, needs washing or careful wiping every morn- 
ing, but Katy's method of doing chamber work, or 
rather of not doing it, calls for immediate use of soap 



IN MY LADYS CHAMBER. 1 23 

and soda water. A clean light pail with plenty of 
hot suds for washing the toilet ware and clean dry 
cloths for wiping should go round with the slop pail 
every day. Bring the chamber pail now with hot 
water and a pitcherf ul of the strong hot soda water I told 
you of, and w^ash and scald every article, for you will 
find they need it. Often the sediment on pitchers 
and bowls will need sapolio to remove it, for it 
almost becomes part of the glaze in time. That 
neglected slop jar you will take out, and scrub with a 
broom and suds, not touching it with your hands; 
then let it stand with scalding soda water in it an 
hour or two, rinse, drain, and leave it all day in full 
sunshine. 

Katy thought it enough to rinse it daily, or wipe it 
with a half-wet cloth. But you must know that dirty 
water leaves a slimy coating on whatever it stands in, 
wood, china, or tin, which is not rinsed off, and if 
left in this careless way, your slop jar takes a lining 
of putrid matter which gives the bad odor to ill-kept 
chamber ware. 

Just fix it in your mind that a bad smell is 
Nature's warning of something evil and danger- 



124 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

ous to be removed, and of all things dangerous about 
a house, neglected slops are to be dreaded. They 
contain fever germs, and are certain sooner or later to 
cause disease. Especially, if any epidemic is about, 
measles, scarlet fever, typhoid, dysentery or diph- 
theria, the floating invisible seeds of such sickness 
finds in the foul lining of waste pipes or slop jars and 
pails the very soil where it starts and spreads. The 
wisest doctors and scientific men are earnest in beg- 
ging people to be more careful in these things about 
their houses, as the most terrible scourges are 
traced back to such beginnings as a sour sink, a 
neglected garbage barrel or ill-smelling slop pail. 
Above all things never allow slops to stand in bed- 
rooms longer than can be helped. Run up the first 
thing after breakfast and empty them, leaving the 
beds till later if necessary, and at night, again 
empty what collects during the day, that it may not 
taint the air they breathe w^hen asleep. This is the 
rule of the best English housekeeping, and in this 
country, and you must not think it too much trouble, 
for nothing is more necessary to health than such 
care, especially in warm weather. 



IN MY lady's chamber. 1 25 



Everything which holds water or slops in a bed- 
room should have a cover to keep the dust and bad 
air out of the water, and to keep the gases from the 
slops from spreading in the room. Miss Nightingale 
will tell you more about this matter. 

I should not dwell on this if the care of bedrooms 
was not so shockingly misunderstood. Not one 
private house out of ten is well kept in this respect, 
and in boarding schools, etc., is shamefully neglected. 
I know of places where excellent French and music 
are taught with beautiful manners, where girls sleep 
in close rooms where the smell from neglected slops 
and wet carpets never dry about the washstands, is 
not to be described. Of course headaches, dull 
chills and nervousness are common, and I have 
heard of malignant fevers in schools and boarding- 
houses caused by the same neglect. 

Every day you should wash the slop jars and pails 
with clean suds, and a whisk or swab kept for such 
things, then wipe, or set them to drain in sun and 
air. There is nothing like sunshine to search and 
cleanse away the last trace of ill things, for the rays 
of the sun have the chemical power to destroy the 



126 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

germs of decay and disease in everything submitted 
to them. Sun your rooms, sun your clothes, your 
furniture and all utensils, to be sure that the inward 
refinement and purity we all strive for, I hope, extends 
to the sanctity of cleanliness and health of even 
the meanest article in your house. If the highest 
motives have weight with you, remember that as 
mistress or housekeeper, you are bound before God 
to watch over every point that can affect the health 
of those under your roof in food, comfort and cleanli- 
ness, most of all because more depends on them 
than any other of the conditions of life. Let no one 
with pettier views persuade you either that such care 
is beneath you as a lady, or is needless labor. It is 
the fashion to ridicule careful women who are anxious 
for the old brightness and strictness of housekeep- 
ing, but the worst old shrew who ever scrubbed and 
scolded deserves satire less than the women who 
neglect and slur over things of such vital importance 
as strict neatness and healthiness for " higher things," 
** claims of society," and the artistic cant of the day. 
If you think this talk is too serious for the subject, 
remember that we elders see the end of many things 



IN MY LADYS CHAMBER. 127 

which for you are at their beginning. Even if you 
are careless about these things to a degree, typhoid 
fever may not visit your house this year or the next, 
and nothing worse than chronic catarrh, headaches, 
or neuralgia, may ever come of it. But you can 
count on some reward for negligence, for nature 
always repays slights. 

When you make beds in the morning, let it be with 
clean apron and freshly washed hands. You will not 
want to leave the dinginess from possible rubs against 
sink or stove on white counterpanes, or to sully white 
pillows with careless handling. A separate apron for 
making beds should be kept for such work alone. 
Turn the mattress over, end for end, and fold the 
sheet smoothly under the four sides of the bed, so 
that tossing at night will not pull it out of place. The 
old-fashioned sheets, two and a half yards long, won't 
do this, but a sheet six quarters wide and three yards 
long is a good size to turn under and keep in place. 

By the way, it is nice to have a case of stout sheet- 
ing made to slip over the mattress and tie, to keep it 
clean under the sheet. This cover can be washed, 
and in moving or handling beds saves wear and soil 



128 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

enough to make it great economy to use one. The 
bolster needs a close case for, probably, the sheet 
will slip off and leave the ticking to be soiled by 

sleepers' heads. 

The upper sheet is to be brought well down and 
turned under the foot, blankets laid the same way, 
the end of one coming a foot farther than the other at 
the head, not to lie heavy on the shoulders at night. 
A narrow blanket crossway at the foot of the bed is 
comfortable for cold feet. The coverlid should reach 
quite to the bolster, but not turn over at the top, be 
laid square and true, turned under the foot, and then 
with the rest of the clothes be tucked lightly inside 
the rails of the bedstead, not folded under the sides 
of the mattress, but left for the air to reach. The 
white coverlid should be large enough to come well 
down, and look as if the bed were a huge square iced 
cake, without a wrinkle anywhere, at corners or foot. 
The sheet is turned over the clothes a quarter of a 
yard at the top. You don't need telling that the 
same end of the sheet goes to the head of the bed 
each time, or that the same side should be next the 
bed and blankets always. There is something not 



IN MY LADY S CHAMBER. I29 

pleasant in having the end that was over your feet 
one night next your face the next, or the side you 
slept on two or three times turned next the clean 
blankets, to soil their fairness. In winter, have the 
footcovers or duvets as the French call them, comfort- 
ables of eider or goose down, a yard deep to lay 
across the lower end of the bed. These are very 
prettily made, because they are for the outside of the 
bed, and one side is crimson and another blue, or one 
is pearl gray with the other coral pink, or the top is 
pink brocaded with roses, and the under side rose red 
shading richly with it. It is well to have pretty things 
for your beds if you can afford them, because they 
make rooms attractive, and one tries to keep them in 
nice order, more than common ones. The boys' beds 
can be furnished with blood red or deep blue blankets, 
turkey red comfortables, and gay colored spreads, 
while the best room has all the glory of downy white 
blankets embroidered at the ends, the upper pair in 
pale blue or pink lamb's wool, fine as plush, the red 
and amber or rose color and pearl eider puffs and the 
marseilles quilt, or the guipure lace over velvet or 
garnet silk — just as you happen to afford it. 



X. — SUMMER COMFORT. 

YOU dread summer ? Most housekeepers do, I 
believe ; summer with its roses and dust, its 
sunshine and flies, its fresh fruits and hot cooking, its 
garden parties and the burden of entertaining com- 
pany. Yet we were made to live through summer, 
and there must be some way in which it can be made 
endurable and welcome, even to a girl or woman who 
has the work and the cooking to do. 

The house is clean by the first of May, let us say, 
at farthest,, and the summer struggle is to keep it so 
through the season. 

One of the weak-minded women was lamenting 

w^hat hard work it was to keep entries and sitting-room 

carpets from being tracked over with spring mud, and 

how the dust would blow in from the street, and cover 

everything so she might go round with a duster in 

her hand all day and it wouldn't do a bit of good ; 

130 



SUMMER COMFORT. I31 

and then the flies seemed as if they would eat her 
up. The reason for her discomfort was not far to 
seek. 

Outside her house was an untidy broken clay path, 
the grass worn away, leaving bare patches which 
would furnish mud and dust for the year round. The 
scraper was rickety, the mat clogged with last week's 
mud, the door-handles in the sitting-room were sticky 
from the children's fingers, and the breakfast-table 
stood, uncleared, inviting . flies, with sugar bowl 
open, cakes and syrup left in the plates, and the 
crumbs unbrushed from the cloth, although Mary was 
washing the dishes in the kitchen, for we could hear 
her. If the woman had set out to have flies and all 
sorts of summer plagues she couldn't have made bet- 
ter arrangements. Now it is hard to banish dust and 
flies, but it is possible to prevent them entirely. 
See that the turf around the house is sodded and quite 
up to the borders, and that the walks are well graveled 
or cemented. Don't make the wretched mistake of 
using coal cinders and ashes for walks, for they ruin 
shoes and dresses, track badly when wet, and look 
dingy and mean anyhow. Cinders can be used for a 



132 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

layer under gravel or sand, but should never come in 

sight. 

Have a large mat outside the front door, no matter 
whether of coir, husks, or braided rags, but keep it 
clean by turning it over and beating with the broom 
when dry. A wide low scraper so placed that it is 
easy to use, and a second mat inside the entry door 
in bad weather, will lead people to make their shoes 
neat on entering the house. In summer sprinkle the 
walks and the grass plot to keep the dust down, and 
you wdll not be troubled wdth much in the house. 

Before hot w^eather begins remove all woollen cur- 
tains, furniture and carpets that will hold dust. 
Mattings or a dark painted floor with rugs made from 
bits of carpet are nicer in summer than the most 
expensive carpets. A pretty cottage I once saw was 
laid with white matting at twelve cents a yard, with 
half-yard border of plain dark-red Venetian carpet 
which cost fifty cents a yard. Any dark old carpet 
will answer as border, or you can get pretty ingrain 
borders from seven to twelve inches or half a yard 
wide at twenty-five to fifty cents a yard. All fashion- 
able summer houses have bare floors of inlaid wood, or 



SUMMER COMFORT. 133 

plain oak, maple or chestnut, or stained and polished. 
A nice new pine floor stained red like cedar and var- 
nished with shellac, is pretty, and any old floor, 
stained with burnt umber to a walnut color and fin- 
ished in shellac is handsome enough fto go with any 
furnishings. You can stain and polish a floor seven- 
teen feet square in this way for one dollar and a half, 
doing the work yourself, which any girl in her teens 
is equal to. Instead of Japan varnish, always use 
shellac on floors, for it w^ears better and never dries 
sticky. Take a hair brush instead of a broom to 
sweep such polished floors, or you can wipe them 
every morning with a damp mop as easily as they can 
be swept. 

If you want a cool house in the torrid days, look 
to its ventilation. It passes understanding how 
people can keep their rooms shut up as they do in 
summer. I dread to go into some houses in the vil- 
lage, for they are certain to have the rooms closed to 
keep out the flies, wdth perhaps a two-inch crack of 
a window left open, and the room smells like the 
interior of a pyramid with its stale air. To be cool 
or healthy, the house should have a draft through its 



134 ANNA Maria's ' HOUSEKEEPING. 

entries from ground to garret ; not a gale of wind 
blowing the curtains about, enough to set everybody 
sneezing, but a gentle steady change of air. If there 
isn't a transom to open over the street door, there 
ought to be, ar^ it should stand open, together with 
a window or trapdoor at the top of the house, night 
and day except in storms. Air ascends naturally; 
give it an opening on the lower floor to come in and one 
up-stairs to go out, and it will rise, carrying all heat 
and smells and much dust wdth it out of the house. 
Flies will not live in a draft : they are delicate crea- 
tures and a strong air offends them. You never see 
houses like Judge Parsons, with wide windows and 
folding doors that stand open all season, troubled 
with flies. 

If there is no transom in the outer door, the upper 
cross panel might be cut out and an openwork piece 
closing with a slide inserted to give air. Or the 
shutter door that can be locked and barred at night, 
leaving the real door wide with the garret window or 
one in the upper hall open will give a cool current 
through the halls. If all the inside doors have tran- 
soms or openwork ventilators opening into the entry 



SUMMER COMFORT. 13S 

and their windows down at the top and properly 
shaded, you will have a cool house the hottest day of 
August. And such contrivance will give the family 
refreshing sleep on sultry nights, and the usual 
scenery be omitted of uneasy ghosts in white drapery 
wandering to and fro with palm leaf fans in their 
hands, exchanging laments and trying for a cooler 
place till daybreak. 

You think about having door and window screens 
of course. The best writers on ventilation do not 
approve their use whether of wire or mosquito netting, 
because they do not allow air enough to pass through 
their meshes to properly supply the rooms. You 
know how close and warm a room with these screens 
always appears on coming from the outer air. With 
the upper window open and a strong current forcing 
its way through them, wire screens are not ojec- 
tionable, but if you have a nice green yard between 
the house and the street, and no mosquitoes to dread, 
I shouldn't put screening between me and the fresh 
air merely to keep out flies, for flies can be kept out 
better in another way. It is much more desirable to 
have awnings for all the windows on the sunny side 



"V 136 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

of the house. People imagine these are expensive 
for general use, and so they are if you employ an 
awning maker to put them up complete. But when 
the striped awning stuff is seventeen cents a yard, 
and any woman with a sewing machine can make it up, 
and any carpenter can rig frames for them for twenty- 
five cents a window, no good house can afford to be 
without them. Awning or no awning, you must keep 
the sun off the glass if you want a cool house. Let 
the sunlight into rooms for an hour as early or late 
as possible, for they need it winter and summer to 
keep them pure ; but shut the blinds before the day 
grows hot. If there are no blinds, have cotton 
shades for the outside of the window, or as some 
housekeepers advise, lower the top sash and draw the 
roller blind outside to hang over the glass, for it con- 
denses the rays as they pass through, making the 
room doubly hotter. Even on a winter day, if you sit 
in the sunshine which falls through a window, the 
heat soon becomes unbearable, because the glass 
increases its power. So on warm July days you want 
the rooms swept and in order and the blinds closed 
before nine o'clock in the morning. A very comfort- 



SUMMER COMFORT. 137 

able fashion I saw in a seaside hotel was to hang cur- 
tains of common chintz or shirting at chamber doors 
so that they might stand wide open and airy, with 
sufficient privacy most of the time. 

Now about flies. I can tell you from experience 
that it is perfectly unnecessary to have even a dozen 
flies all summer. The neighbors darken their houses 
and shut themselves up and half suffocate behind 
screens for fear of these plagues, but I never do 
either, and rarely see a fly. They don't like to come 
and see me, for they never get anything to eat. One 
law in this household is executed with the fidelity of 
a dragon, if dragons are faithful as supposed — and 
that is, to allow no crumbs or smears, and no trace of 
eatables about the place, outside of the proper rooms 
and proper hours. Where there is no food there are 
no flies. You have got to choose between taking 
strict care to starve them out, or have twice as much 
trouble with their presence. Yes, I've lived through 
the usual worry of babies with sticky fingers and 
children who wanted something to eat between meals, 
and know what it all means. I don't remember 
whether I kept a wet sponge to wipe fingers and 



138 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

doorknobs tied to my apron strings or not, but it was 
something like it. In the first place there is no need 
of children running about with smeary fingers, and 
slices of bread and butter, for they can learn before 
they speak to eat in proper places, and to have hands 
washed as soon as they are through. I have seen a 
baby worry as much because his hands were not 
washed as his nurse could to see him so. Then 
sticky doorknobs and shelves must be washed any- 
how, and it is just as easy to .do it first as last, after 
they have drawn a feast of flies. A smear of sweets 
on a doorknob, a fragment trodden into a carpet, a 
dust of sugar or drop of sauce on a pantry shelf is 
enough to feed a dozen flies and they are alert to 
take advantage of it. No food is to be eaten or kept 
in the china closet, which is the place for dishes and 
table ware only : all eatables in the pantries are to be 
kept closely covered in clean plates or jars, all crumbs 
wiped or swept up as soon as made, and no food or 
scraps are to stand in the kitchen uncovered when 
not actually in use. Is it necessary to leave cups of 
sugar about with flies taking toll, or gravy with two 
or three swimming in it, or the freshly baked cake 



SUMMER COMFORT. 139 

for the whole swarm to parade over, when it is so easy 
to cover things with saucer or cloth ? In the dining- 
room, as soon as the table is set, it should be covered 
with the fresh white netting kept for the purpose, and 
the moment the family rise, let it be replaced till you 
are ready to clear things away. All food should be 
set away in icebox or pantry under cover, tablecloth 
shaken and the crumbs brushed up before the dishes 
are washed, which should be soaking all the time. 
Then air the dining-room thoroughly, so that the odor 
of food may leave it, and let the windows stand open 
between meals. 

Half the heat and worry of cooking and kitchen 
work may as well be saved as not, even in summer. 
I used to work very comfortably in our country 
kitchen, by taking the old-fashioned windows out 
bodily, leaving the wind to draw through freely and 
temper the heat of the large stove. The model 
kitchen will have swing windows, to let all the air in 
possible, but till people have sense enough to build 
them, we must manage cooking with as little heat as 
we can. Plenty of families light the range but twice 
a week all summer, on washing and ironing days 



140 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

doing the baking and roasting for the week. The 
small kerosene stoves with ovens will do all the cook- 
ing and ironing, with little heat and expense. And 
I advise you to set one of these down as an indis- 
pensable help. A double stove with three cooking 
places costs twelve dollars, and will rob summer 
cooking of its terrors. Three gallons of kerosene at 
fifteen cents each, will do all the cooking and ironing 
of a family for a week, and many women use but half 
as much. There is the comfort of abolishing: all 
dust and trouble of making fires, or waiting for the 
stove to heat, and the moment the last dish is lifted 
from the stove, the fire is out and all • is cool in five 
minutes. As for washing, that can be done in sum- 
mer without any fire at all. New soaps are made 
which cleanse clothes and whiten them thoroughly 
without the aid of hot water. I have used them for 
over ten years, and have whiter, sweeter clothes than 
the washerwomen with all their scalding and perspir- 
ing. Any good chemical washing soap will cleanse 
things beautifully without hot water, if they are soaked 
in sunwarmed suds, and bleached for an hour in the 
hot sun before rinsing. Leave the water in tubs to 



SUMMER COMFORT. I4I 

warm in the sun, the day before, and put the clothes 
to soak at night with plenty of soap, using both more 
soap and more water than is usual. Wring them out 
of this and put them through the machine in tepid 
water, rubbing all soiled places lightly with soap, 
and laying them wet on the grass in the sun. As 
soon as dry, have them rinsed and hung out. No 
matter if they are a little yellowish, the sun will 
whiten them for you. This mode is practised in 
England among the cottagers, some of whom are the 
neatest women in the world. And Southern house- 
keepers tell me it is the way washing is done in the 
Gulf States. When you have the strong sun to do 
the work, with chemistry stronger than any soda or 
bleaching powders in the world, what is the use of 
heating the house and making it horrible every Mon- 
day with slops and steams and smells unmentionable? 
You will find no stains or grime able to resist sun- 
shine. If they do not disappear at first drying, dip 
them into clean weak suds or even clear water, and 
bleach again, wetting them several times as they dry. 
On a rainy Monday, which set half the housekeepers 
in town fretting, I have seen people take the clothes 



142 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

from the soaking tub and lay them on the grass for 
the rain to wash, and when it was over rinse and 
hang them up, clean and dazzling white as no laun- 
dry could make them. It was using sense and infor- 
mation together. If you can have sun and rain do 
your work for you, why waste your own strength and 
time over it ? 

If the ice gives out and you want to cool butter, 
WTap the roll in linen in a clean unglazed earthen 
flowerpot, and tie the whole in thicknesses of old 
flannel or blankets, wet them thoroughl}^, and set in 
the shade, in the wind, in a shallow pan of water. 
The evaporation from the wet flannel and porous 
clay will cool the contents remarkably. All water 
for drinking or cooking should be filtered, for pure 
water is growing rarer and rarer with the wasting of 
the brooks, and bad drainage of streams and wells. 
Filtered water in large jars of stone ware kept wet in 
an airy place will be refreshingly cool without ice. 
The Mexicans and Spanish settlers in the Southwest, 
cool their drinking water in such jars as their fathers 
on the Continent did before them, and our people in 
New Mexico and Arizona are learning to prize the 



SUMMER COMFORT. 1 43 

great vases and ollas as much as Yankee bean pots. 
Flowers and boughs assist in keeping the house com- 
fortable as well as delightful, for the flowers drive 
flies away by their perfumes, and large jars of green 
fern, alder, branches of willow or any thick-leaved 
tree kept in water will cool a room by the moisture 
they give out. The English peasantry know this, 
though they cannot tell the philosophy of it, and in 
old times the custom was to set tubs and pails of 
water full of green boughs about the stone floored 
cottages for coolness. The w^ater should be changed 
every day, and have a little borax or charcoal to keep 
it sweet. I think you will like this excuse for keep- 
ing your rooms full of fresh green things and fra- 
grant flowers, the only things of which we cannot 
have too much. The less furniture in summer rooms 
the better, as leaving them more spacious and airy. 
With a trim house which every sweet air can w^ander 
through at will, its leisurely spaces, its freshness of 
sprinkled leaves and flowers, its softly lowered lights 
making rooms and chambers pleasant, kitchen trou- 
bles reduced to their least heat and effort, with light 
nourishing food of soups and stew^s, vegetables 



144 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

cooked with gravies, giving us the essence of meats 
without bulk, fruits, berry-cakes, puddings and deep 
plain pies, salads and velvet creams, we find that 
great heats can be borne tranquilly without loss of 
comfort or strength. 



i 



XL — BLUE MONDAYS. 

A POOR housekeeper always dreads Monday/' a 

■^ ^ wise woman once said in my young ears when 

I thought Mrs. Barbauld might as well have written 

Never yet did housewife j 

Greet with a smile the weekly washing day. ' 

Sunday evening would close serene and full of lovely 
thoughts, while Monday opened on scenes of slop 
and steam, soiled clothes strewn over the floor, a 
sink full of unwashed dishes, an unkempt house, and 
a mistress with hair and temper awry. This is the 
kind of penance some women go through every 
week of their lives, and never improve in fifty years' 
experience. 

Not every woman needs to do her own washing, 
even in plain families, but every one should know 
how to order things that washing days will not make 
the whole house uncomfortable, and be a martyrdom 

145 



146 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

to the worker. It is best to know how to take a 
hand at the washing yourself, for laundresses are not 
found in every part of the country, and many an army 
officer's wife, many a home missionary's wife, and the 
daughters of well-to-do families in country towns, find 
themselves obliged either to wash their own clothes 
or go without clean ones. Lady Hester Stanhope 
when a girl in the proudest family in England, used to 
remember her aunt, the Countess Dowager, going 
about the wash-rooms and bleaching grounds, peer- 
ing into tubs and " coppers," — as the English call 
boilers — berating the maids and occasionally plying 
her rattan across their shoulders if the linen was 
not white enough to suit her ladyship's ideas. Miss 
Martineau and Mrs. Somerville used not only to 
wash linen and laces, but to dye and " do over " 
gowns and pelerines in right notable fashion, and 
George Sand who was a woman of much force of 
character as well as genius, often recalled how in the 
days when she was making her literary reputation in 
Paris she did her own washing — and did it beautifully 
too. I never knew a woman of really fine spirit and 
breeding who could not without hesitation accept 



BLUE MONDAYS. 1 47 

whatever duty was needful, whether tending a sick 
person, doing field or housework, or looking into 
details of business. 

The loveliest, most refined women have always 
in reserve a fibre of steel to meet the inevitable 
without affectation or complaint. IVe seen a high- 
bred Englishwoman with accomplishments at her 
fingers' ends, work at the wash tub as composedly 
and gleefully as if born a laundry-maid, while the 
young women of no particular family or bringing up are 
the ones who cannot go to market without a maid to 
carry the basket, cannot carry a parcel and always 
speak of washing and " domestic duties " as things 
of a lower order, quite out of their comprehension. 
I do not mean that one is to do rough work unneces- 
sarily, but that you should learn a spirit which asks 
only, ** Is this necessary, is it best ? " and thereupon 
make duty acceptable and becoming. Half the 
rough work in the world — I will speak the truth and 
say most of the work in it, is rough only in the 
manner of doing it. Not to be in heroics over 
common indispensable work, which belongs to our 
cheeriness and comfort, along with white curtains 



148 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

and ruffled skirts, snowy kerchiefs and collars, and 
soft white body linen, I would have you feel your- 
self so much of a lady, so thoroughly in love with 
what is fine and becoming, that you are safe in doing 
whatever is convenient for you, whether it is digging 
the borders and filling fiower-pots, or putting the 
week's washing through the alchemy of white foam, 
to come out snowy and odorous of freshness. 

The beginning of washing as it should be, is taking 
care of the soiled clothes through the week. They 
must not be tossed in all sorts of corners to gather 
more soil to vex the washerwoman and wear them 
out, neither must the clothing full of perspiration 
from the body, be packed in a bag or basket to satu- 
rate the heap with smells. You know that clothing 
absorbs the secretions from the body, and if at all 
warm and damp, these change into unwholesome 
poisonous matters. Ill-smelling clothes are not good 
for one to work over, or breathe steam from the suds 
in washing them. When you change clothes, put the 
soiled ones in the sun to air thoroughly an hour 
before putting away. You may have a clothes 
bag of gay calico lined and bound with red alpaca 



J. 



BLUE MONDAYS. 1 49 

braid, a double bag with stout partition in the middle 
and a large opening each side, for you want to keep 
fine things slightly soiled apart from those that see 
hard usage. Such a bag should hang in the up-stairs 
entry to receive soiled things from the bed-rooms, 
and be emptied daily into the big basket in the 
airy back-kitchen, shed or porch, never anywhere in a 
close closet or cellar-way to taint the air around. Have 
a separate bag for tablecloths and napkins. Dish- 
towels and cloths are to be washed and rinsed daily, 
dried and kept separately from everything else. 

Be good to yourself by making and keeping one 
hard and fast rule : always to do the washing Mon- 
days. There is reason for this ; because you never 
will feel so strong and fresh for the hardest work 
of the week as after Sunday's rest. Remember rules 
are favors for the makers and rods for the breakers, 
when you grumble at having to do things when 
you don't feel like them. The penalty usually is 
having them to do when you feel still less inclined 
and less able, in a vexatious hurry. 

No matter if the girls are going in town shopping 
by the Monday train and want you to join them, or if 



150 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

the committee of the Bluebell Coterie want you to go 
around to solicit subscriptions for the momentous 
matter of their society badges, or if you feel just 
like reading the new poems all the forenoon and 
writing letters in the afternoon — to tell what you 
think about them. Let these weighty interests 
go by — for Tuesday morning you will feel just as 
strongly inclined to go after flowers with the May 
party, or to work at your sofa cushion, or to call on 
the neighbor who was hurt last week, and by Friday, 
the housework will roll up in a crushing shape, when 
you have neither strength nor spirits to meet it. 

Promise yourself to begin that you will never allow 
the washing day to be dreadful to you or the house, 
and that its disagreeables shall be met and conquered, 
as they may be by the aid of common sense and 
intelligence. Now you want to put your wages into a 
new sort of a servant, one that will do the work, and 
neither waste, steal or tattle, and whose keep costs 
nothing:. You can afford to have all the modern 
helps for washing, a good washer, of the rocking 
patent, or still better, one of the steam boilers and a 
rocking washer beside. If you can have a small 



BLUE MONDAYS. 151 

laundry next the kitchen, by all means persuade your 
father to fit up one, with a boiler set in the brickwork 
to save fire and avoid heating the house in summer. 
*' Set tubs/' as servants call them, are very convenient 
for lazy people, but are not kept clean as easily as 
movable, round tubs, which are better every way. 
And where a regular laundry is impossible, a small, 
extra stove for the boiler, round tubs with wooden 
spigots to let the water out and hose to lead it into 
a large barrel or cesspool furnish every help at 
small expense. Aunt Hester wdll tell you that a 
stove can be picked up at auction for three to five 
dollars which will answer all purposes. The steam 
washer costs three dollars and fifty cents, and the 
rocker from five to ten dollars as you may get it 
new or second-hand. If the latter, it will need to be 
cleansed inside and out with a broom and hot lye, to 
clear away the grease and settlings careless people 
leave in machines, which smirch clothes where 
you least expect it. The laundry must never be a 
rubbish hole, but be kept clean and free of dust, 
so that you will not have any more soil to wash out 
than belongs to the clothes. It is well to have two 



152 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

wringers, one of large size for sheets and counter- 
panes, so as not to strain the smaller for common 
articles. A large closet should be made to keep 
all the washing utensils clean and out of sight. 
You want plenty of clothes lines ; one to hang out 
all the time for drying and airing things every 
day, and two for the washing, to be taken in when 
the clothes are dry, and kept in a clean bag. Com- 
mon hemp line is cheap enough so that you can 
keep a fifteen-cent one out rain or shine, but you 
must keep lines and clothes-pins clean, or you will be 
vexed with soiled spots on the fresh linen which 
won't wash out easily. Don't use galvanized wire 
lines ; they wear the clothes, and in winter freeze to 
them so that they are easily torn. Clean props and 
galvanized hooks for the line are necessary, and 
above all, a well-kept grass-plot for the drying-ground 
where no dust, no hens or weeds can mar your clean 
washings, with a shady corner for calicoes, that the 
sun may not fade them. 

What else ! No soda nor washing powder, javelle 
water nor bleaching fluid which whiten clothes beau- 
tifully but ruin them in a short time. Some powders 



BLUE MONDAYS. 153 

and fluids are safe, but none are better or cheaper 
than borax which we know is good for hands 
as well as clothes. A pound of borax in a wide- 
mouthed bottle tightly corked is enough to last three 
months, and costs ten cents. An ounce of oxalic 
acid in a bottle with glass stopper will last a long 
time for taking out iron rust, and you want a pound 
of chloride of lime for bleaching desperate spots, or 
for disinfecting purposes. Bluing in little balls is 
better than the liquid in bottles. Beside these, keep 
one or two articles in your washing-closet not usually 
found there, but very useful — a peck of clean wheat 
bran for washing nice prints and lawns, and a truss 
of hay to restore color to brown linens. A small jar 
of rock salt is convenient to dissolve in the rinsino: 
water to set the color of new prints. Keep these 
things ready, for it is troublesome hunting them up 
just as you need them. 

Put the clothes in soak in tepid water, making a 
good lather to begin, and rubbing plenty of soap on 
the bindings, cuffs, and soiled places. Hot water 
sets the soil, tepid or cold loosens it, and soap com- 
bines with the animal oils and perspiration, which it 



154 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

neutralizes and takes out. It does not make much 
difference whether clothes are soaked all night or 
half an hour, provided plenty of water and soap are 
used. When ready to wash, the first thing is to 
wring the clothes from the soaking water into a tub 
of clean warm suds, where they are rubbed. This 
may be done with the washing machine which turns 
out house linen nicely without other rubbing. Body 
clothing will need careful rubbing by hand on a 
washboard on all places where the wear comes. 
This is best done on a Magic washboard, which has 
slats an inch square that turn as one rubs, giving the 
clothes four times the rubbing on their blunt corners, 
they get from a common board. If you can't afford 
a machine, by all means have a Magic washboard, 
which is one of the few inventions that are really 
helps ; it cleanses clothes very easily, does not wear 
them out, only costs fifty cents, and is better 
than most washing machines. I had one once, but 
don't know where the kind is made or sold. Let me 
tell you one thing about rubbing clothes; to fold as 
many thicknesses as you can handle between the 
soiled place and the board, if you want to wash easily 



BLUE MONDAYS. 1 55 

and well If you take up a fold or two and rub hard 
on the spot, it does very little good, for the fingers 
take the rubbing, not the cloth. To cleanse neck 
bindings, cuffs, or soiled stockings, use a dull steel 
knife or a wooden one to scrape them, laying them on 
a smooth board in the tub with many folds under the 
soiled parts, and dipping them in the water often. 
This is an easy way to get out the grime from cotton 
stockings that have been drabbled. 

But these hints are for you only if you can't have 
that best gift to housekeepers, a steam-washer. I 
can never get over wondering at the simplicity and 
effectiveness of this little contrivance of galvanized 
iron tubes which sets the jet of boiling suds playing 
through and through the boiler of clothes till every 
spot and stain is discharged without the aid of hands. 
With the steam-washer you do not soak the clothes, 
but soap every soiled part dry and plunge them into 
the boiling water to steam half an hour. By all rules 
this ought to set the stains, but this is the exception 
which proves the rule beyond our common knowl- 
edge. Chemistry tells us, and experience shows, 
that heated steam, and soap boiling through clothes 



156 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

half an hour is too much for mortal soil. Things 
come out clean, but rather sad looking ; they need a 
'^ sudsing " in clear water to wash away the grimy 
boiling fluid ; then the rinsing in plenty of fair water, 
shaking and bluing, and you hang out clothes of old- 
fashioned w^hiteness which soar between you and the 
blue sky on the line, till the verses come into mind 
about the linen fair and w^hite which is the right- 
eousness of saints. If washing is worth doing at 
all, it is worth doing w^ell , not with ruinous alkalies, 
but with safe ministers which bring out our clothes 
the symbol of purity. 

There is nothing vulgar about w^ashing — that is, 
there should not be, need not be. Take time to 
sweep your kitchen first, and have the dishes neatly 
piled in the sink to soak till convenient to wash 
them, set chairs in place, brush the stove clean, and 
pray don't have stove covers straying about the floor 
— for nothing makes the kitchen more forlorn — but 
pile theni in the oven out of the way. Have your, 
wash-bench scoured white, the tubs and baskets in 
good trim ; don't allow soiled frocks and flannels to 
illustrate the floor while they wait their turn, and 



BLUE MONDAYS. 1 57 

keep the doors closed between the kitchen and other 
parts of the house. With this care, and a stove ven- 
tilator, you may wash every day of the week and no 
one in the house be the wiser. 

I won't tell you any farther about washing; you may 
find the rest in Mrs. Cornelius' Housekeeper's Friend, 
and learn by asking every washerwoman you meet. 
For clever as you may be, to the day of your death it 
will surprise you that you can't find an old horny- 
hnaded laundress or char-woman who won't tell you 
something helpful you did not know before. 

Clothing from the sick or towels soiled by ever so 
slight illness should be put immediately into warm 
w^ater when taken from the person, all unpleasant 
substance removed after soaking an hour, with a 
very dull knife kept for such uses, and then put 
in lukewarm soapsuds till it can be properly washed. 
Never leave such things to dry and make the air 
offensive. If the disease is contagious, put the 
cloth into water which has a tablespoonful of carbolic 
acid to the pailful, and add a heaping dessert spoon- 
ful of chloride of lime to the boilerful of water when 
the things are boiled. Garments and bedding from per- 



158 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

sons sick of diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever or any 
contagion should never lie about a house, or be 
washed with the family washing, as they are likely to 
give the whole house the same disease. 

And lastly, Anna Maria, don't stint your people 
in clean clothes and towels '' to save washing." I 
vowed from the time I was a girl the phrase should 
never be heard in my house, but everybody should 
have all the clean towels and pillow-cases, napkins and 
handkerchiefs they wanted, if I had to sit up nights 
and wash them. With a Robbins steam washer a 
Doty rocker and wringer, you will find it easy to 
keep the family in the very luxury of white linen, 
snowy toilet-covers, ruffled pillow-cases, and unsul- 
lied skirts, clean napkins every day and dainty 
tablecloths, so that your brothers will never have 
occasion to wish that things might be as nice at 
home as they are at the restaurant or the club. I've 
seen too many slender women get their big wash- 
ings out of the way by ten o'clock Monday morn- 
ing, with the aid of a good machine, and sit down 
smiling and untired, to have any dread of the process 
on which the honor and health of the house- 



BLUE MONDAYS. 1 59 

hold depend. Pray is the labor ignoble which fur- 
nishes the glistening sheets and spreads for the 
guest chamber, the snowy curtains for the bedroom 
windows, the crisp tucks and ruffles, the trim, spot- 
less stockings and fresh collars and linen for every- 
body? Then see that you make it respected by 
your cleverness and tact in doing it. 



XII. — STARCHING AND IRONING. 

T HOPE, Anna Maria, that you follow the old 
-■- fashion of starching bed and table linen 
slightly, for things look better, iron easier, and keep 
fresh longer for it. Pillow cases and sheets feel 
cooler and more grateful for the finish starch gives 
them, and absorb less from the body. Nor need 
there be the waste of starch which half-taught servants 
find necessary. I never found one who had any rule 
for the amount used, whether there were a dozen shirts 
and sheets or only three ; they guessed at the starch 
wanted, and some girls took pride in saying they used 
a pound every week with the washing. Clothes are 
better for just enough starch to give finish, not stiff- 
ness, and more than this injures the fabric. Of 
course shirts and collars are the exception, which 
need to be stiff to hold their shape. 

Most of the starching is done when the clothes 

i6o 



STARCHING AND IRONING. l6l 

are rinsed. Shirts and fine linen or muslins require 
gloss starch, which comes in packages — common box 
starch answers for everythmg else ; or if that makes 
too much an item of expense, flour starch, well made 
with bluing, will do for cottons and colored things. 
Make starch when the fine clothes are nearly done 
scalding ; have a very clean bright saucepan to boil 
it in, for the least grease or rust will affect it, and 
stain the clothes. For each shirt, collar, and pair of 
cuffs, together, allow a teaspoonful of dry starch. 
Have your teakettle of water boiling fast; moisten 
the starch with one tablespoonful of cold water for 
each teaspoonful of starch ; dissolve the lumps, then 
pour on the boiling water gradually, stirring fast in the 
saucepan on the stove, till all lumps and milky white- 
ness disappear, and the whole boils clear. Strain 
through a very clean coarse cloth into a large dish, and 
cover to cool. When collars and cuffs are rinsed drop 
them into the starch, and rub them in it as if you 
were washing them, so that it will be well rubbed into 
the fabric ; wring them with your hands, or wipe the 
jellied starch from the surface and dry quickly. You 
must not hang out shirts and linen just starched on a 



i62 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

breezy day, for, as the laundry maids say, the wind 
blows all the starch out of them ; neither should you 
put them oat in a fog or damp weather and expect 
to find them stiff when dry. Better dry things just as 
they are rinsed, and starch them the next day it is 
fine. 

There will be starch left, but not enough for the 
rest of the washing. For muslins, add twice as much 
hot water, and boil over again a moment. Dip mus- 
lins or laces into the starch when cool enough, press, 
or clap gently between the palms, and shake the 
moisture from each article without wringing, which 
frays the delicate substance. Fine things look much 
clearer for being waved till dry, or drying in a breeze, 
and taken in the moment when dry. Now for the 
common washing allow a dessert spoonful of plain 
starch to each sheet and pair of pillow cases, and to 
each tablecloth. Make the starch as before, in larger 
quantity, and add it, a quart at a time, boiling hot to 
the bluing water. Don't put it all into the rinse at 
once, as some folks do, for then the first things rinsed 
will have most of the starch, and the last very little ; 
but wring out a few pieces and put in fresh starch for 



STARCHING AND IRONING. 163 

the rest. Have it hot, because it is thin and mixes 
better so. Bring your clothes in quickly if it is a 
windy day, before they are dry, and finish them in the 
house, if you want any effect from the starch. Don't 
hang starched things where they will freeze. In win- 
ter dry your shirts without starch and finish operations 
in the house. Never let marseilles quilts freeze, for 
the forcible shrinkage injures the figure and splits 
the material. Old washerwomen tell me never to let 
clothes hang out when snowing, for " snow grays 
things,'' which may be from the ammonia in the 
flakes. 

Boil brown or unbleached linens in water with a 
handful of hay in the boiler, to keep or restore their 
shade. For prints, especially the pretty, expensive 
percales which lose all beauty in ordinary washing, 
there is only one way of treatment. Tie a quart of 
bran loosely in a sleazy cotton bag, and boil it with 
three or four pails of water. When cool, take half to 
wash the dress in, using a very little fine soap on greasy 
places ; don't let the garment soak a moment, but 
wash quickly, and rinse at once in the rest of the bran 
water, then in a pailful of lukewarm water, and dry in 



i64 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

the shade on a clear breezy day, take in when damp, 
and iron at once. The bran cleanses the cotton and 
acts as starch besides. Any colors that bear washing 
at all, may be cleansed in this way. You should take 
a separate day for doing up nice prints, when the 
weather is just right, and you can iron them immedi- 
ately. This is the French method of washing fine 
lawns and cambrics of delicate colors, and the Bon 
Marche, at Paris, that great establishment where you 
find everything a woman is likely to want for herself 
or her house, sells thousands of little bags of bran 
and oatmeal, for baths, and for doing up dresses. 
Common prints would look a great deal better than 
usual, if washed at once, one piece at a time, and 
never allowed to soak, but hurried through the starch 
and on the line before another was put in the water. 
The exception is with new black, or black and white 
prints, which should soak ten minutes the first time 
they are washed, in strong salt water, a pound of 
coarse salt to a pailful of cold water. 

In old times ironing was one of the fine domestic 
arts, like making cake and taking care of china. 
There is a pretty picture in some quaint correspond- 



STARCHING AND IRONING. 165 

ence of the last century, where a lady describes how 
she and her young friends met to iron their laces 
and linens at each other's houses, and how Lord 
Harry This and Sir Charles That, in their scarlet 
coats laced with gold, and their flowing shirt ruffles, 
lounged beside the ironing tables with jest and com- 
pliment while pretty Mistress Betty and Lady Susan, 
in muslin caps and kerchiefs, and flowered chintz 
gowns tucked up over quilted red petticoats, ironed 
kerchiefs, caps, and aprons, and crimped shirt ruffles 
till tea. In those days only the ladies of the family, 
or the head lady's maid, could be trusted to do up 
the fine muslin articles which made so much a part of 
a woman's toilet, and to this day it remains an accom- 
plishment to iron well. It is ladylike work, for iron- 
ing requires strict neatness of all surroundings and 
deftness of hand. For all the increase of laun- 
dries till there is one in every new town, one can 
seldom be sure of having things washed, much less 
ironed as they should be. Collars and cuffs come 
home with the streaks of last week's wear ironed 
under the polish ; nice ruffled ginghams are rough 
about the gathers, and show dull patches where the 



i66 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

material was allowed "^to dry before ironing; plain 
underwear, napkins and pillow cases are so hastily- 
done that one is uncertain whether they were touched 
at all. 

I tell you, Anna Maria, all the little niceties, the 
finish of housekeeping, pay : the carefully dusted 
corners, the fresh napkins every day, the smooth 
glossy linen, the pillow-cases that wear the press of 
the iron in every thread and seam. Men feel the 
soothing, refining effect of this far-reaching care and 
order, even if they are heedless enough to destroy it 
in an hour; boys feel it, children love it, and crave it. 
When Bennie w^as a little boy four years old, he 
used to insist on having the sheet turned dow^n and 
the pillows spread smooth as hands could lay them, 
and then crawl in carefully, not to disturb the snowy 
smoothness, and lie luxuriating in the order and 
whiteness of his bed. The big boys have come 
home evenings and gone into their neat rooms, with 
the beds made up wdth fresh linen, the second time 
in a week, and the chuckle of content w^hich escaped 
them, overheard in the entry, was enough to pay for 
all the trouble. It has been worth all care and pains 



STARCHING AND IRONING. 1 67 

to have them write, " There is something about home 
I miss everywhere. It seems as if things were 
cleaner there than anywhere else. I have lain 
awake Sunday mornings with my eyes shut, so I 
couldn't see the dust on the mouldings in my board- 
ing-house, or the dingy curtains or the half-ironed 
towels they brought me, and have thought of home, 
with the white back stairs, where the clean carpet 
and the sheets, towels and tablecloths always seemed 
so fresh. I never knew what neat housekeeping 
was worth before. It's the one thing that makes 
a home.'' 

Half the success of ironing comes from having the 
things in the right state to iron ; neither too damp 
nor too dry. Sprinkling and folding them just be- 
fore you iron won't answ^er. The moisture must 
have time to be absorbed evenly through the fabric. 
Sprinkle and fold clothes over night for Tuesday's 
ironing. The old rule is to " sprinkle fine," that 
is, in fine drops ; but I hope you have one of the 
twenty-five-cent sprinklers, which does the work to 
admiration in half the usual time. Have an empty 
basket to hold things as they are folded, the large 



1 68 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

table clear and the kitchen in its best order. Clean 
clothes are certain to take a smirch if there is grime 
or dust in reach. Sort the towels, pillow-cases, nap- 
kins, handkerchiefs, aprons, all together. Beginning 
with the cases, sprinkle each, taking care that hems 
and corners are not left dry; spread each case length- 
wise, lay half a dozen in a pile, smoothing out the 
wrinkles with your hand, and roll together tightly as 
possible. The pressure takes out the wrinkles and 
leaves less for the iron to do. Follov/ with towels 
laid together and rolled up the same way. It is 
better than folding each piece singly, for they do not 
dry so soon. Dust your basket well with a whisk, 
lay a large clean cloth in it, and put the folded 
clothes in, sheets and large things lowest, small 
things on the top, and cover close with another 
cloth. Colored things should not be sprinkled till 
an hour before ironing, and should not be laid with 
white clothes at all, as the colors may run with damp- 
ness. 

To iron with comfort, you want a clean kitchen or 
laundry, good light, a neat stove, and hot irons. 
Have the table close to the heater, so that you need 



STARCHING AND IRONING. 1 69 

not walk back and forth for fresh irons ; and it is a 
great convenience to have a swivel chair without 
arms, in which you can sit and iron part of the time. 
In hot weather, the best way is to first heat your 
irons on the common stove after breakfast, let the fire 
go out, and keep them hot with the kerosene heater. 
It is hard to heat cold irons by the kerosene stove, 
but, once heated, it will keep them piping hot a whole 
afternoon with one third of a gallon of oil. The 
heater can be on a stand — an old sewing-machine 
table, say — close to the ironing-table, and you will 
find it hastens work wonderfully to have plenty of 
hot irons in reach of your hand. You will need, on 
the table, a clean blanket and sheet to iron on, wip- 
ers and clean linen-covered holders which are cooler 
than woollen, a bowl of clean water and cloth to 
dampen spots. 

Six irons are needed, of which two should weigh 
from eight to ten pounds, for sheets and table- 
cloth, two of six pounds, and two light ones having 
sharp points for ironing gathers. A pair of polish- 
ing irons for shirts are considered indispensable now- 
adays, and you can grind off the tips of middle-sized 



170 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

irons on your grindstone to make them. You must 
keep all your irons well polished, and nothing is 
more convenient for this than a block of sandstone, 
or part of a broken grindstone. Failing these, strew 
sand on a board and rub the irons over it. Then 
rub when warm with beeswax, wiping very carefully. 
See that your irons are in good condition before you 
begin, and that the heater is clean, and the fire well 
replenished. A tin cover for the irons while heating 
will quicken the process, and save the heat. See 
that no window or door opens a draft on the irons or 
the table. You will find your irons cooling vexa- 
tiously fast in a current of air. To work well or 
fast, your irons must be as hot as possible without 
scorching. Use them, if a little scorching, on rough 
towels or tablecloths, moving very quickly. 

To iron a pillow-case, take it by the seam corners 
and shake out ; lay it with the seam next you, and 
iron one side smoothly, first along the seams, then 
across ; fold lengthwise and iron the other sides ; 
fold once more along the middle, iron the fold 
smooth, and fold across the middle, pressing the 
folds with a heavy iron to have them sharp and 



STARCHING AND IRONING. 17 1 

nice, then hang on the clothes-frame, which should 
be dusted with a damp cloth, and have a clean 
white cloth to cover things. 

When you iron a wrinkle into anything, wring the 
cloth in the bowl of water, dampen the place, and 
iron again. If a corner of a hem gets dry dampen 
that before ironing, in the same way, and you will 
have no faults in your work. Handkerchiefs and 
napkins you will iron all around the hem first, then 
across, always ironing the same way the threads of 
the weaving run, not cornerwise, or the article will be 
askew. Fold them squarely, and let a heavy iron 
stand on them a moment. 

But all the heavy ironing should be done by an in- 
vention I hope to see in every kitchen as commonly 
as a stove — the family mangle. This is a pair of 
polished wooden rollers, working with cogs, like a 
clothes wringer, and sheets, tablecloths, towels, all 
articles without gathers, folded and put through, 
come out smoothed by pressure, without the heat and 
fuss of ironing. Most English houses have the bed 
and table linen mangled, the hems of sheets and pil- 
low cases being finished with irons, and the gloss put 



172 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

on the damask by a second ironing. A small mangle 
costs ten dollars and would save its price in a year in 
fuel, to say nothing of the comfort of ironing without 
fire in hot weather. Another convenience is a stout 
clamp or brace to hold the end of the skirt board 
steady while ironing, instead of resting it on a chair, 
which is uncertain support. 

I have not told you how to iron a shirt or collar, 
because it would take an article by itself to do that. 
Neither patent polish or polishing irons, bosom 
boards or pleat knives will ever teach you how to 
iron a shirt nicely, unless you take care of twenty 
points in the work beside. Yet you can do it. I 
have known girls of ten and twelve years old who could 
iron shirts or collars neatly, and have sat beside the 
ironing board while an accomplished lady, a French 
and Latin scholar, turned off six shirts, faultlessly 
ironed and polished in half an hour with the certainty 
of machine work, every stroke telling, and, to the 
best of my recollection, she used neither polishing 
iron or prepared starch. Learn the rest first ; to iron 
every gather in skirt, flounce or sleeve, to turn out 
ruffles like flower petals for smoothness, to iron bias 



STARCHING AND IRONING. 1 73 

bands, damping and ironing over the wrinkles till 
they fade out; to press clear folds with the heavy 
irons ; to iron puffs with the little French egg-iron, 
or to fold in the middle, iron like a ruffle, and then 
erase the fold by damping it and running the tip of 
your sharp fiat iron, along its length; to iron strings 
of all kinds as if they were ribbons, and to do plain 
underclothes with the same preciseness you would 
the richest show embroideries. 

I have not told you of any polishes to put in 
starch, for I have seen as fine work done without 
them as with them. Polishing is not a matter of 
butter or salt or gum arabic or spermaceti in the 
starch, though people use such things. The gum 
makes linen hold stiffness better ; it does not make it 
glossier than starch properly used, and well-hoiled. 
I will give you a few hints, however, for practice. If 
linen blisters in ironing it is because starch was 
not well rubbed into the fabric. Touch the place with 
thick starch and iron over again. If starch cakes 
and sticks — either it was ill made, too much starch 
used for the water, ill-boiled or lumpy, or the iron is 
not warm enough, or is rusty and wants polishing and 



174 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

waxing, or you have used raw starch and not rubbed 
it well into the linen. If black specks appear on the 
surface, dampen and scrape them off with a knife, 
touch with starch and iron again, first laying a thin 
cloth over it for the first stroke or two. Iron always 
the long way of the threads in starched things ; first 
iron straight into shape and dry, no matter how dull, 
then dampen with a cloth, go over with a hot iron, 
dampen and iron two or three times till the wrinkles 
disappear, and you will find out how polishing is done. 



XIIL — OVER THE MENDING-BASKET. 

"\70U have the serious business of life laid out be- 
^ fore you in that big basket of things torn and 
worn, haven't you, Anna Maria ? Just ask me to take off 
my bonnet and wrap, won't you, and hint that you could 
endure to have me stay the afternoon ? I never did 
think much of the flimsy etiquette which obliges you 
to sit with idle hands whenever a neighbor comes in 
to chat comfortably with you, and loses twenty 
minutes hearing how the children on the West Side 
are with diphtheria, and how Mr. Briggs' barn was 
burned at the Centre last night, and Clarinda Wells 
is to sing at the concert next week, with various en- 
grossing news of the sort, which you could hear and 
enjoy just as well while knitting or sewing the ruffle 
on your apron while you listened. The German 
ladies don't drop work for every caller. English 
ladies of rank do not feel that they show one disre- 

175 



176 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

spect if they keep on with their lace work or stitching 
of any sort. You may have heard of the countess 
who was so fond of plain sewing that she spent her 
leisure at it, and gave away dozens of linen shirts 
made in the finest manner, among her friends. I'm 
not that countess, but I never see a shabby, unmended 
thing that I don't ache to get hold of it, and make it 
presentable, and the thought has crossed my mind 
whether in small society like ours, intimate friends 
couldn't be of use in meeting round to do up each 
other's mending and making over, as well as in sew- 
ing for the poor. We might sew for the poor and for 
our friends too, and give sickly Mrs. Dawson a chance 
to get out on fine days without being haunted with 
that heaped-up mending-basket, and the boys' trousers 
that need darning at the knees, and we might let Miss 
Carington, the school teacher, rest her eyes evenings 
after correcting a dozen exercises, instead of doing all 
her own sewing, so that she can send more money home. 
That would be doing good as we have opportunity, to 
some purpose. 

Well, now, before we begin, have you good 
needles, long and short ? Is the sewing machine in 



OVER THE MENDTNG-BASKET. 1 77 

order ? Are your scissors and shears sharp ? for you 
can't do neat mending unless they are. Have you 
smooth strong linen thread that works easily, silk and 
twist, and strong sewing cotton, and binding tape ; 
not the glazed sort, but fine, twilled tape, both narrow 
and wide, with buttons of pearl, linen, agate, horn and 
metal? You had better spend a dollar at once for 
such things. You can get a year's supply of all these 
** findings '' of the best quality, tapes, needles, buttons 
and threads, from the city, for a dollar, and it saves 
hours of time and wear of clothes to have them ready. 
Get them, and keep in a locked drawer of your work- 
stand where the children cannot get at them, to mix 
and tangle things. Keep stout needles threaded 
with black linen and white cotton, coarse and fine, 
and black silk, on a hanging cushion where any one 
can seize them to sew on a loose boot button, or 
baste a ruffle, or tighten a coat button in a hurry. 
The time and the temper IVe saved since T learned 
to keep my needles threaded and handy ! 

That reminds me, Nellie pet, your boot buttons are 
loose. Jump up in my lap and let your next friend 
sew them on. Not that black cotton, if you please, nor 



178 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

the sewing silk that frays, nor the fine linen thread 
either. Give me that stout Tiank, and a number four 
needle, and the wax. And, pet, we'll double the 
thread and knot one end of it only, so there will be 
no clumsy knot to mark your soft foot, and we 
take just three stitches apiece to each button, fasten 
thread with a stitch in the lining of the boot^ without 
cutting it, and go on to the next, till they're all done; 
and if one of those buttons comes off till the boot 
wears out, tell me, and I'll come and sew it on again. 
I think you observed that you hated nothing worse 
than sev/ing on boot buttons, Anna Maria — the pull- 
ing to get the needle through, and thread fraying, is a 
great trial of patience. So it is, and I think too much 
of my patience to give it unnecessary trials. If you 
have good linen thread and wax it well at first and 
after sewing on each button, and have a needle just 
right to carry it, it won't fray or break ; using double 
thread, three stitches do the w^ork of six single ; and if 
you fasten thread between the buttons without cutting 
till all are sewed, you will find it hold till the shoe is 
old. There is something in knowing just how to sew 
on even a boot button. 



OVER THE MENDING-BASKET. 1 79 

Now you are not going to waste hours of precious 
existence in darning those gaping heels of socks ! 
You will cut out the heel entirely, take up the stitches 
and knit a new one double in an evening. Or you will 
hire it done by the girls of the Industrial Home, or by 
old Mrs. Cutter, who earns her missionary money and 
her liniment by odd jobs at home. If you can't do 
this, get soft buckskin, and sew heels of that in Joe's 
socks, as I have seen good housekeepers do. The 
next socks he has, I advise you to get a pair of stock- 
ing savers, of fine leather, like the lining of ladies' 
boots, to slip over the heel, for they do away with a 
great deal of mending. It is well to buy socks and 
stockings that are a size larger than one needs, to 
allow for shrinking, which makes them wear out. Our 
merchants are just beginning to sell children's stock- 
ings with double-knit heels and toes. The whole sole 
of hose ought to be double to resist wear, but at least 
you can line the boys' pairs. Those scarlet cashmere 
stockings have the feet well worn out, and the color is 
faded beside, with Katy's method of washing, which 
leaves all the fine flannels and stockings to soak in 
strong suds, while she rinses the others, instead of 



i8o ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

whisking each stocking through its wash and up to dry 
before the dye can start. But the legs of the pair are 
firm and good, so if you want fine wool hose that will 
outwear three pair of woven ones, do you get white 
Saxony yarn, knit feet to the old cashmere tops, 
and have them dyed the popular dark red. In this 
way you get stockings handsome and durable, and 
the old tops will outwear two pairs of knitted feet yet. 
Nellie's stockings have broken out in small holes in 
the heel. Nellie, child, bring me the tack hammer so 
that I can drive the steel peg into the heel of your 
little shoe that makes these wicked holes. Looking 
after the shoe-pegs and welts often prevents damage 
to stockings. 

The high wind tore the sheets this week on the line, 
and there is no use in sewing up the rent. The only 
way to get farther wear from them is to turn them. 
Rip the hems two inches at each end, overcast the 
selvages of the sheet together, tear it down the mid- 
dle and hem the edges. You have a neat, new sheet, 
that will wear six months or a year longer. The 
corners of the hems are fringing out in the best 
sheets and tablecloths, because the careless maker 



OVER THE MENDING- BASKET. l8l 

did not know she ought to put twice as many stitches 
there as in the rest of her work, and fasten by sew- 
ing the ends over and over. I take it for granted 
you are too good a housekeeper to hem napkins or 
towels or sew seams in sheets with the machine, as 
slack women do. You can't make a machine hem 
look well on damask or toweling, the work draws, 
and looks mean, while as for sheets, I wouldn't be 
buried in one with a machine seam ! A machine 
hem for sheets is another thing. Those tablecloths 
can only be made neat by paring the corners round, 
and hemming them again. There is a thin place in 
the damask. Give me some ravelings of coarse 
linen and w^e will have it darned in a few minutes. 
Here is another cloth quite worn out in the centre 
while the ends are good. Cut off two ends the full 
width of the linen and three quarters of a yard 
deep ; hem these for carving napkins, to lay under 
the roast and soup at either end of the table above a 
clean cloth, to save it from spots. The smaller side 
pieces of your old cloth will do for bread or lunch 
cloths, to put over a small table. Or, you can cut 
out the weak part in the middle of your old cloth, 



i82 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

and insert a square of half-worn damask from the 
corner of one in like case, joining the two by her- 
ring-bone or open-stitch. A little knowledge of 
fancy work is the saving of many a half-worn article 
nowadays. Keep all the old napkins and handker- 
chiefs — all the old linen you have. You want nap- 
kins to wrap cake in, to strain things through, and 
when past every other use, they are invaluable for 
hospital lint and charpie — which is a coarse lint. 
We who remember the war and the Sanitary Com- 
mission, know how priceless every scrap of old linen 
in the country was for the hospitals, and such times 
may come again. If not war, there may be acci- 
dent, when there will be little time or heart to hunt 
up necessary things, so keep your old linens and soft 
worn cotton ready; have them washed, boiled and 
bleached on the grass, to be pure of all stains, iron 
them on both sides, to make them soft as possible to 
raw, shrinking wounds, cut out all seams, hems and 
bindings, roll them together and keep where you can 
find them at a moment's notice, with the court plaster 
and salve, in the medicine closet. Here are old 
chemises and nightgowns, in good shape yet, but 



OVER THE MENDING-BASKET. 1 83 

too worn to last through a month's washings. Lay 
them by, ironed without starch, for sickness, when 
poultices and liniments would ruin better ones. 
Here is a nightgown with binding and ruffle worn 
out; choose thinner, finer cotton, rebind, and whip 
new embroidery on the neck and wrists. Good 
gowns will always wear out two sets of ruffles. The 
children's nightgowns are too short, but quite large 
enough round the shoulders, and not half-worn. 
You may put on a deep ruffle to lengthen them, or 
cut the skirt straight across by a thread, and piece 
them down by a machine seam, overcast, not felled, 
goring and hemming the new part to suit the rest. 
Don't patch that torn sleeve, cut off the weak part 
and add -a new half-sleeve. This chemise band is 
torn through ; if you sew it up, it will break out next 
time it is worn the same way ; cut the torn edges, rip 
the band an inch or two, and spread the gathers, 
then add an inch and a half of new cotton, facing well 
to the ends of the band ; embroider the bit to match 
the rest, or work a few scallops in crochet to suit, 
and the garment is good for another season. Half a 
dozen buttonholes broken away ; that comes of mak- 



184 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

ing them too near the end of the binding. Rip off 
the torn corner, piece the binding an inch longer 
than the old one, and work a new buttonhole at least 
three eighths of an inch from the end. That sort of 
buttonhole will outlast the clothing it is made on, 
and Joe can't tear it out, by trying. 

Here is a set of merino underwear, shrunken too 
much to be comfortable, you say. Cut the vest 
straight down the front from the button flap, add a 
wide facing of twilled cotton on each side, if the chest 
needs widening, and make buttons and buttonholes 
all the way. Cut the binding off the drawers and cut 
two or three inches from the lower part of the shirt, 
sew the two garments together by overseaming the 
raw edges closely, and facing the seam with soft tape. 
You have a combination suit as convenient and com- 
fortable as those you pay eight dollars for. This all- 
wool vest is wearing thin under the arms ; run it, like 
the heel of a stocking, with white zephyr wool, and it 
will wear six weeks longer. Children are always 
plagued to get in and out of their clinging merino 
under shirts ; cut them open all the way down, and 
add wide facings to button from top to hem. Your 



OVER THE MENDING-BASKET. 185 

father's under-shirt is wearing thin on the shoulders ; 
take the skirt of an old one, not too worn, and face 
back and shoulders, catstitching the facing down and 
new binding the two at the neck. The sleeves are 
quite ragged ; replace them with a new flannel pair, 
with knit cufis at the wTist. It's some trouble, but it 
all saves buying twenty dollars' worth of new under- 
wear this season, and gives you the money to spend in 
pleasanter ways. 

This silk undervest is worn under the arms, and the 
mate to it has no sleeves at all, to speak of. For the 
first, insert square gussets, cut from bits of old silk 
stockings, sewing the edges together over and over. 
For the other make sleeves out of the long tops of 
worn silk stockings, ripping the hem, sewing the large 
end into the arm hole and knitting a small cuff to 
cling round the wrist. This knit skirt of Shetland 
wool is completely worn through in front, but it is a 
pity to throw aside so expensive a piece of under- 
wear. You can match the wool in the city, and 
with wooden needles knit a new front which wdll give 
the skirt three seasons more wear. That Welsh flan- 
nel is wearing very thin on the front breadth, but the 



i86 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

rest is sound ; line the front with thin twilled wool that 
comes for lining, shrinking it first by washing. Such 
skirts must be lined, turned hinder part before, and 
upside down, and new borders crocheted for them 
before they can be called legitimately w^orn out. Do 
you know American women are the most careless and 
extravagant creatures about clothes in the world, 
taken as a whole ? I notice rich women, who always 
have been used to money, will twist and turn, retrim 
and refresh their clothes very much more than women 
who have to contrive for every new garment they get. 
One of my acquaintances paid three hundred dollars 
for an embroidered camel's hair suit, when such dresses 
first came in fashion ten years ago, and she bought an 
evening dress the same season for nine hundred dol- 
lars. Both gowns are in wear yet, remodeled to suit 
the style, and will reappear into new^er ones to make 
variety for five years more. And all these hints about 
refreshing nice underwear I have drawn from the best 
dressed women of my acquaintance. 

You will call my methods with old clothes making 
over, rather than mending, and so they are. Life is 
too short to do so much mending every week, and I pre- 



OVER THE MENDING-BASKET. 187 

fer to give a fortnight to it the beginning of each sea- 
son — put on new bindings, stays and facings, sew on 
buttons so they will stay the whole year, fit up stock- 
ings and merino wear and have the business off my 
mind for three months, except the little looking 
over which takes in all not more than half an hour 
weekly. 

Joe's trousers come last, and I don't wonder you 
heave a sigh over them, torn, dusty things as they are. 
Give Joe a clean, stiff manilla scrubbing-brush, which 
you will find the best possible thing for cleaning thick 
clothes, and have him take the trousers out on the 
back porch and brush them clean. Then leave them 
on the clothes line to blow and air in the sun half a 
day before you mend them, and they will be much 
pleasanter handling. There must be a patch on the 
knee of one pair, but neither Joe nor any one else need 
know it. Cut the hole square by a thread, cut your 
patch an inch and a half larger, baste it true and even, 
which is the nicest part of the work, stich it by the 
machine, open, the seams, dampen and press on the 
wrong side with your heaviest iron. Haven't I seen 
my friend Mrs. Burrows sit down before six pair of 



1 88 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

the worst-looking trousers a boy ever went through, 
insert patches or half a leg as needed, machine stitch- 
ing them so truly and pressing them so skilfully 
afterward that no boy, however notional, could object 
to wearing them. 

Tailor's shears and goose, and ample cloth for 
piecing, made the work very different from the bun- 
gling patches which sad-eyed mothers toil over, leaving 
padded knees which justly are a trial to any boy's 
sensibilities. You should see the repairs which city 
tailors will put on gentlemen's clothes. I've seen an 
eighty-dollar coat with a dozen moth-holes up the 
front, darned and filled so nicely you had to take a 
magnifying-glass to find the places. When you know 
how, cloth is the easiest thing to mend nicely so that 
piecing won't show. When Joe buys new clothes, 
see that he brings home large pieces for mending, 
and don't roll them up and put them away to look 
bright and fresh when they are used to patch his 
faded trousers. Lay them in the sun, every day for 
a week, so that the color will be toned down, not to 
contrast with the rest of the suit. And put the evil 
day of mending far off by lining the knees of all 



OVER THE MENDING-BASKET. 1 89 

trousers with soft twilled linen which will take the wear. 
I believe in having garments so cared for and rein- 
forced in weak places, and where the wear comes, 
that they do not need repair, but like the deacon's 
one-horse shay, last till they come to pieces, and are 
'done with. You will find it much the best way. 



XIV. — FOOD AND DRINK. 

'^ I ^HE saying that every house has a skeleton in 

•^ its closet has more fact than poetry about it, 

if we are to take the evidence of our sense of smell. 

You come upon the skeleton behind the door of an 

unaired clothes-closet press, where soiled things and 

stale bedroom odors have their own way week after 

week, till you wonder nice girls can bear to put on 

dresses which hang in them. Too many pantries and 

food closets have their spectre, if we judge by the 

mouldering, unsatisfactory odors about ice-box and 

meat safe, and the worst is, that it doesn't stay there, 

but comes out in the shape of dull headaches and 

sore throats and low fevers which haunt the house. 

This is serious talk, but it isn't more serious than 

the facts call for. Doctors who spend their lives 

looking into these things, tell us that every year, out 

of a certain number in town or country, beside the 

190 



FOOD AND DRINK. 191 

old and infirm, and those who inherit disease or die 
of accident, twenty thousand die needlessly of illness 
from bad air and bad food. They are not all poor 
folks who live in squalid, fever-stricken alleys and 
must buy the refuse of the markets to eat at all. The 
most luxurious homes suffer equally with the poor, 
and no house is safe until the skeleton has been 
hunted out and laid permanently by daily, intelligent 
care. Housekeeping is not a mattej of mere comfort 
and respectability, and every woman and girl must 
learn their responsibilities, for the health, strength 
and life of the family is in their hands. The food 
people eat three times a day, the water they drink, 
the air they breathe, constantly have more to do with 
their happiness and success than money or talents, 
and more to do with their long life than any other 
care or medicine. 

Pure water is growing scarcer to find as the country 
is older and more closely settled. For water may 
look clear as mountain brooks and taste sweet as the 
rill from a glacier, yet be very unsafe to use. There 
is a town in Northern Ohio noted for its spring of 
sparkling, delicious water, which never fails to make 



192 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

new-comers violently ill when they drink it, from some 
mineral in solution. The wash of weedy shores, the 
use of animals, the drainage of fields, may make the 
pond water which supplies town reservoirs veiy un- 
wholesome, while few would find anything to com- 
plain of in its taste or smell. Well water is not safe 
to drink if there is any sink drain, stable heap or 
vault witjiin a hundred feet of it, for the wash from 
all such places soaks through the soil six feet in a 
year and more, and sooner or later will reach the 
well or the underground spring which supplies it. 
Nor can you call water fit to use when slops and 
washtubs are emptied on the ground about it, or rains 
can wash the soil through the ill-fitting curb. A tightly 
covered well is not so good as an open one, for water 
needs air to make it sweet. One thing you can be sure 
of, that though water which is bright and sparkling 
may be unsafe to drink, water which isn't clear, and 
looks or tastes unpleasant, is sure to be dangerous. 
When spring opens and the town water, or the well, 
runs roily and yellow for days from the melting of 
the last snow which carries the w^ash of the banks with 
it, or when in summer it smells fishy, or has the 



FOOD AND DRINK. 1 93 

cucumber taste we come to know so well from the 
water-weed or the mucus in the pipes which carry it, 
you don't need to be told that it isn't fit to use, and 
it's an even thing if you don't have low fever or 
chills before the season is over, from drinking it. 

What are you going to do about it ? Use filtered 
water for drinking and cooking entirely. You can 
buy a filter for five dollars, and you will find it the 
best use you can make of the money. Let alone 
health and safety, in a week after using it you will 
begin to wonder why the meat and vegetables taste so 
much nicer, and remark how much better tea and 
coffee this seems to be than the last you had, and 
after a little you will discover it is owing to the fil- 
tered water. Everything cooked in pure water has a 
finer taste, and tea and coffee are not the same things 
made with it. But a filter wants care ; for the sponge 
which strains th^ worst impurities out of the water, 
should be washed and dried in the sun, or in the 
oven, every day, or it soon grows foul. The best 
way is to have two sets of sponge, and let one air all 
day while the other is in use. Then the packing of 
sand and charcoal in time is clogged with impurities 



194 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

which begin to wash back into the water, and the 
sand has to be washed, sunned, and dried, and the 
charcoal burnt over in a red-hot retort to consume 
the waste with which it is loaded. Be sure to get one 
of the new filters with two sets of strainers, which can 
be unscrewed as easily as you take the mold out of an 
ice cream freezer, so that one set can be cleansed 
while the other is at work. To make sure of pure 
water, change the packing once in three months. If 
you cannot have a filter, and are not certain of the 
safety of the water, boil it, and let it cool in a porous 
earthen jar in the shade and wind. Boiling frees it 
from animalcula or vegetable matter, and softens it, 
and emigrants whose neighbors were sickening all 
around them from the bad water of ponds and marshy 
springs, have kept in perfect health by drinking no 
water which had not first been boiled. 

It is a great thing to have arrangements complete 
for a supply of pure water, and you want to do as 
much for food. Now let me tell you that you can't 
have food fit to eat that is kept in a close cupboard, 
however clean. If you have but a closet to keep food 
in, it must have a window and a gentle draft of air to 



FOOD AND DRINK. I95 

carry off the odors which else will spoil all the more 
delicate flavors. For the odors of food are its finer 
parts, and in an airless closet these settle and are 
absorbed by the wood, the plaster, the milk and but- 
ter, the flour and other eatables. Then you have the 
butter turning cheesy or frowy, the cream taking a bad 
taste, the milk souring sooner than it ought, the very 
pies, bread, and flour losing their w^holesome sweet- 
ness. In the storeroom you can't keep salt fish, sour 
milk, cheese and onions in all their fragrance, and 
have anything else nice. Did you ever have the 
privilege of going into one of these common country 
store-rooms, not the sweet dainty places we read of, 
smelling of sugar, and spice, and all that's nice, but 
one of the sort we don't read of, clean and scoured, 
but where the fragrance of the bean pot vies with 
that of the buttermilk jar, and the sour yeast in the 
corner, and the fried fat in the doughnut kettle, and 
yesterday's soup, and to-day's chowder thicken the 
atmosphere with fish and onions ? If you had, it would 
be the best lesson on ventilation of food you would 
want. The very shelves and walls of those old pan- 
tries get the cheesy and salt fish and hammy smell, 



196 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

and you can't keep anything sweet in them till the 
plaster is^ whitewashed and the wood washed with 
purifying lye. If you would have wholesome food, 
Anna Maria, keep the pantry window down at the top 
night and day, except in the coldest weather. 

Food of all kinds keeps better on clean dishes, so 
don't think it is too much trouble to pour the gravy 
into a fresh bowl and put the slices of meat on a clean 
plate^ and turn the few spoonfuls of jam into a saucer 
instead of leaving it in the smeary compotier, which 
is a better name than our awkward *' sauce-dish." 
Reason why, thin smears and daubs of food spoil 
soon and help spoil the rest. Especially see that the 
milk, cream and butter are put away in clean ware. 
Milk will keep sweet longer for this little precaution, 
and things are so much pleasanter to see and handle. 
Then everything must be closely covered with cloth 
and small plates. It is well to buy different sizes of 
cheap ware for covers, and the odd little pottery, mugs, 
bowls, and pitchers are very convenient for holding 
bits and ends of food too good to throw away. Beside, 
food keeps better in this ware than in anything else. 

Fat of all kinds needs the nicest care to be sweet 



FOOD AND DRINK. I97 

and wholesome, for nothing takes odors more rapidly, 
and if you leave cupfuls of grease, or drippings, to 
stand open in the closet, you must expect to find a 
queer flavor in your fried potatoes, and several differ- 
ent savors in the plain piecrust beside the one you 
wanted. Keep all the fat from cooking in a small 
stone jar, well covered, try it out once a week into a 
clean jar and let it cool uncovered in a draft of air. 
In winter set it out doors to freeze, which refines it 
remarkably. At other times keep it tightly covered 
in the icebox. Fat which has absorbed a coarse 
taste can be purified by freezing and become nice 
again. 

Butter wants much more care than most people 
give it, both in making and keeping. The way to 
secure good butter for winter is to buy it in fifty- 
pound firkins in September, when it is usually as 
cheap and good as at any season of the year, have it 
put up with a very little saltpetre and sugar, and in 
a clean place it will keep sweet a year. I haven't 
given many receipts, but here is one which I have 
tried over and over, and which can't be too widely 
known and used : 



198 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

Take two pounds best dairy salt, one pound white 
sugar, one ounce saltpetre finely powdered and sifted 
through muslin. Mix all these well together. Keep 
in a bottle closely corked, and work one tablespoon- 
ful into one pound of butter and it will keep indefi- 
nitely. There is nothing hurtful in the compound, 
and the saltpetre prevents the acid from forming, 
which gives the butter a strong taste. You can 
work this into market butter if you choose to take 
the trouble, and I think it will repay you. 

Instead of opening the firkin every day for butter 
for the table, cut out a week's supply at a time, to be 
kept in a small stone jar, and keep the butter in the 
large package closely covered top and sides, with 
clean linen cloths, and a large cloth and wooden 
cover over all. Butter soon loses its best flavor when 
open, and becomes not much better than so much 
suet. As good butter is the key note of a nice table, 
and as poor butter is a very unwholesome thing to 
eat at all, you must pay particular attention to its 
keeping. A plate of it that has been shut up in a 
closet with meat, left-over food and close air, is not 
fit to be eaten by a human being. 



FOOD AND DRINK. I99 

Keep milk in the purest, coldest air you can find, 
with a thin cloth over it. Don't take the warm new 
milk that hasn't had time to get cold since the milk- 
man's cart hurried off with it from the cow, and set it 
away in a tightly stoppered can, for all milk wants to 
stand open to the air, that the animal heat and flavors 
may pass off thoroughly: if this isn't done, the parti- 
cles in the milk decompose, giving the unpleasant 
odor you will notice in close cans, and making it unfit 
to use. Dairies which keep the milk in huge close 
tin drawers or cans instead of open pans make a 
great mistake, for neither butter nor milk kept in 
this way is fit for food, nor will it keep nearly as long 
as it should. Never let milk stand near a sink or any 
refuse. I have heard of children who took diphtheria 
from milk which had absorbed sewer air from the 
vent of a stationary washbasin where the nurse kept 
the pitcher cool at night. If you must keep milk in 
a sick-room, nursery, or in a close closet, let it cool and 
air for three hours in the best place you can find for 
it, then put it in a tight can, with a flannel case, and 
set it in a shallow pan of water in a draft, which will 
keep it cold and preserve it sweet as long as possible. 



200 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



The icebox or refrigerator wants a great deal more 
care than it gets in general. Left to the servants, 
and only half cleaned in a season, it is the most unin- 
viting place for food one can imagine. The waste 
pipe should be in order, so that no water stands in 
the box, for water melts ice, and moisture spoils food 
quickly. The box should be washed thoroughly with 
strong hot suds, rinsing with cold water, wiping and 
airing before fresh ice is put in. ''Well, ma'am," 
the old iceman said as he waited for Mary to finish 
wiping the box one morning, ''I'm pleased to find 
your box is always clean, for ice wants a clean place. 
If you could see some of the boxes we put into, with 
splashes of sour milk and grease and scraps of meat 
and potatoes and everything sticking to the shelves 
as the girls leave 'em ! I don't see how^ anybody can 
eat what comes out of them." Every plate, pitcher, 
and dish that goes into the icebox should be clean as 
possible and closely covered. All dark corners of 
meat should be trimmed off, for these spoil quickly 
and give a stale smell to the box. You do not need 
to be told that vegetables and meat must be kept 
separately from milk, butter, and more delicate things. 



FOOD AND DRINK. 201 

It is a good plan to keep lumps of charcoal in each 
compartment to purify the air, and absorb any odors 
that may escape. 

The care of meat is a nice thing too, and for the 
health of the family, needs more attention than it 
often gets. After it has been well-chosen, bright col- 
ored, fine-grained, with a firm white fat, freshly cut, 
with no dried and darkened edges or corners to spoil, 
and sent home, it must not lie in paper one moment 
more than is necessary, for paper, which is nothing 
but pulp of rotten rags, glue and lime, spoils food 
very soon. Take the meat out, and the first thing 
scrape it clean all over. . You hear people tell you to 
wash meat before cooking, and others say that it 
should be wiped only, for water washes away the 
flavor, but scraping removes all that is not 
nice, and the meat keeps better for being put away 
clean. Fish should be cleaned and wiped with a 
coarse towel and lie wrapped in clean dry cloth with 
salt over it. Meat may be kept without salt by sear- 
ing the outside on a very hot griddle, turning it on all 
sides and letting each cook half a minute. This closes 
the pores so that the juice does not escape, and the 



202 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



air cannot readily affect the flesh; it also makes the 
meat tender. Keep it in pure air, away from sour 
milk, yeast, salt fish, or any strong flavors, for meat 
and flour absorb bad air as well as butter, and spoil 
the quicker for it. 

Vegetables need a cold dark place where they will 
not freeze. They should have clean bins or boxes, 
and be clean themselves when stored. A furnace- 
w^armed cellar is no place for them. A cold, dark 
cellar or garret is the best place for fruit, which 
should be often sorted and picked over. Apples take 
bad flavors from being with other stores. Pick out 
all inferior and bruised ones at first, and make them 
into apple butter, which is the best w^ay of keeping 
them, and is always ready for pies ; and as a compote^ 
which is better, I think, than our word sauce, which 
has so many other meanings already. Potatoes should 
be picked over in February, and scalded in a kettle 
of boiling water for two or three minutes, to prevent 
sprouting. You will find your spring potatoes much 
better for it. Onions should be kept in shallow 
boxes, and need as much looking after as choice 
fruit, for they are very sensitive to bad air, and, when 



FOOD AND DRINK. 203 

not in the best condition, are about as healthy to eat 
as diseased meat. When perfectly sound there is no 
healthier food than onions, and an old English rhyme 
runs: 

Eat leeks in March and onions in May, 
And all the year after physicians may play ; 

which is very sound sense, as old housekeepers and 
doctors can tell you. Onions purify the blood, correct 
biliousness and dyspepsia, and are better for con- 
sumption and children's diseases than most medi- 
cines. Many vegetables have strong medicinal 
qualities. Tomatoes have a similar principle to 
calomel, but not so injurious. All the talk about in- 
jury from tomatoes comes from eating them unripe 
or overripe, or from cans where their acid has dis- 
solved and corroded the tin. I hope some time peo- 
ple will know enough to put tomatoes up in glass jars 
exclusively. Sour vegetables, or fruit shut up in tin 
cans for six months, cannot be the most wholesome. 
The rind of cucumbers contains a very strong purga- 
tive, which is a reason why one should be very care- 
ful to pare them perfectly, and soak them in cold 



204 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



water an hour to extract the drastic juice. One last 
word : never serve any dish of whose perfect sweet- 
ness you are not entirely sure. The slightest stale, 
flat, or changed taste is reason enough to throw it 
away. I knew a whole family made violently ill by 
eating a soup which stood a trifle too long in warm 
weather. Not one of those who ate it tasted any- 
thing amiss, but the cook confessed she couldn't be 
sure whether anything was the matter with it or not, 
and she thought it too good to throw away. I don't 
think any of those people got well of the sickness 
the whole summer for this paltry economy. The rea- 
son why such care is urged in keeping and storing 
food, and keeping dishes and cooking utensils strictly 
clean, is because the little decay or ferment, such as 
gives the rank smell to ill-washed kettles, will start a 
change in food which is very dangerous in the system. 
When your mother or aunt complains of dinner not 
agreeing with her, or one of the boys calls out in the 
night for Jamaica Ginger, you don't think that the 
sUghtly sour bread, or the canned tomatoes that had 
grown sharp, or the stew that had changed, "not 
enough to hurt," as most cooks say — those few drops 



FOOD AND DRINK. 205 

of cankering acid, or yeastly ferment — have acted on 
the sensitive juices and tissues of the body like ver- 
digris or calomel.^^ People can eat food that isn't 
just right a good while and not notice the effect, but 
nature always pays her debts. These things have 
what doctors call a cumulative effect, which means 
that it grows stronger by repetition, till an ulcerated 
sore throat, or attack of colic, pulls one down, and 
he never gets his strength fully back again. One 
hears such sad cases of neglect all the time. Three 
years ago this spring, a young lady of one of the 
wealthiest families in Boston went to finish her shop- 
ping for Newport. It was a warm, oppressive day, 
and going out of the store, she felt suddenly faint. 
Her strength was utterly prostrated from that mo- 
ment; she was taken home in a carriage, and in two 
weeks was dead from diphtheria. In that strictly 
guarded home, with every appliance for health and 
luxury, the cause was found in the waterpipe which 
led from the expensive refrigerator, with its plate- 
glass doors and marble shelves, to the house drain, 
so that all its vile air rose among the food and poi- 
soned all the inmates. Neither the smart footman 



2o6 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

nor the first-class cook had noticed anything wrong, 
for people in general have very blunted sense of 
smell. 

Be thankful if you have senses which quickly warn 
you of unwholesome air. Never mind if dull people 
tell you that ** the smell is in your imagination," for 
the fault lies with them and not with you. If all this 
watching and looking after things seems too much 
effort, remember that the thing in this world which 
can be done without effort and care is not worth at- 
tempting ; and the best inheritance in this world is 
an athletic, healthy spirit, in love with work for its 
own sake, and which counts its ends worth all the 
strength and striving one can put forth. 



XV.— A SCREW LOOSE. 

"^7011 wanted me, Anna Maria, to go over things 
^ this morning, and decide what was best to do 
with them before spring cleaning. You are thinking 
about draperies and toilet mats, mantel screens 
and corner brackets, spring dresses and Kate Green- 
away aprons, with all the pretty devices a girl runs 
over in her mind. You want the house and its belong- 
ings just as bright and pretty as it can be wdth what 
you have. The only trouble is you don't know where 
to begin. 

There is a story of a man who had an ambitious wife, 
who used to say he wanted to be rich, and his wife 
only wanted to be " comfortably off ; " but he declared 
he would be rich a long time before she was com- 
fortable. Everybody wants to be artistic now where 
people used to be content with being comfortable. 

Yet I've seen plenty of folks who thought their houses 

207 



2o8 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

artistic who would never be in reach of comfort. We 
will make sure of the comfort first, without leaving 
taste out, and I think in going over the house, we will 
begin at the front door. 

Do you notice how loose the knob is, how it swerves 
in your hand as you try to turn it, and how Charlie 
has to twist and turn the handle two or three times in 
his little red-mittened hand before the door opens, 
when he comes from school in a hurry ; and what 
a sense of irritation it gives one every time he or she 
takes the ill-conditioned thing in hand? One of these 
times it will come off, and there will be a day's bother 
for the family before it is repaired. Put a stop to all 
this vexation at once by finding a screw-driver and fas- 
tening the loose bolt. Life is too short, too full of 
better things, to have its energies wasted by such 
petty fret and hindrance. The time is nothing; the 
annoyance repeated five or six times a day for weeks 
is something serious in the end. Yet how many 
families endure such annoyances for a whole season 
for want of two minutes' work with a common tool, 
which any schoolboy or girl should be able to do. 

The screw is gone ? Now, you remember, you swept 



A SCREW LOOSE. 209 

it up last week and threw it into the fire, thinking 
it wasn't worth saving. You can buy a dozen such 
screws for five cents, and it wasn't worth the trouble 
of picking up that one. Beside, if you did, it would 
only lie around on the mantel or window sill for 
weeks, and be in the way every time you dusted. You 
hate uninteresting trash about a house. The boys are 
always picking up nails and bits of lead or tin, and 
the consequence is that windows and shelves are 
decorated with such rubbish. You don't mind saving, 
but you don't like the litter it makes. 

I sympathize with you entirely there. I knew a 
family where the father was punctilious about saving 
every nail, every scrap of string, every sheet of paper 
that came into the house, and I know what a burden 
he made life to his womenkind who liked neat ways, 
and were always troubled to put away his nails and 
bits of wire, the nuts and rivets, the tags and strings 
by which his presence through the house could be 
traced. This fashion of saving made me hate the 
very idea of being careful, or of keeping little things ; 
and it was not till I had a house of my own that I 
learned how valuable trifles can be, and that not the 



2IO ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



saving was to be dreaded, but the disorder. You 
want not only to save, but to know how to save. 

For want of that tiny screw to the doorknob, you will 
have to find Willie, see that he is neat enough to go 
down town, and send him to the shop for a paper of 
screws. As Willie is with the rest of the boys, watch- 
ing the ice break up in the river, and will have to 
change his boots when he comes home, and get you 
to sew a button on his coat, and you will have to see 
that his face is clean, his hair brushed, and his mittens 
on, and he will have to bring back samples of screws 
before you can get the right size, I think you will 
agree that it would have been less trouble to save 
the screw in the beginning ; better still to have tight- 
ened it as soon as it came loose. But while you wait 
for the screws, let us provide against such awkward- 
ness happening again. I want to give you a charm 
against all litter of nails and strings, all losing of 
screws, loss and breakage of every sort, as far as 
mortal can prevent. You want a light wooden tray — 
an old kitchen knife-box, or quarter-box for raisins will 
answer — with handle in the middle, and small parti- 
tions in the sides to hold things of different sizes. 



A SCREW LOOSE. 211 

Have the tray finished as nicely as you can, scrubbed 
with sand or sandpapered, all roughness smoothed, 
and cracks filled, last of all, finished with oil varnish 
which will not chip like spirit varnish. A neat tray 
that you don't object to handle is more likely to be 
used than a rough, grimy box no one wants to touch. 
In this tray you want tools : a claw-hammer large 
enough and heavy enough to drive a ten-penny nail, 
and let me tell you, though you are a girl, it is easier 
to drive nails with a hammer of some weight than 
with these foolish light tools sold *' for ladies' use." 
Next, you need a common screw-driver, such as comes 
with sewing machines, and costs five cents ; a larger 
one for obstinate screws, twenty-five cents; a gimlet 
for boring holes, five cents ; two files, one coarse, one 
fine, the two costing twenty-five cents ; a handsaw, 
fifty cents; and a good jack-knife worth twenty-five. 
You have a hatchet with broad blade already — as 
most families do — but is it sharp ? If not, the 
kitchen grindstone will set that right. Add'to these, 
if you choose, a kit of soldering tools, which come 
for women's use in a neat wooden box for fifty cents, 
iron, scraper, solder and resin complete. Also a 



212 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



glue-pot and two wooden clamps at five cents apiece, 
and you cannot only save the cost of repairs, which 
is the least consideration, but also the waiting for 
things which need mending, and the vexation of care- 
less workmen and slighted work. Things have come 
to such a pass now that the ordinary workman will 
often refuse to mend a thing at all, preferring you 
should pay the price for a new one. As he says, 
" Not wanting to be bothered with repairs.'' I have 
taken my French coffee-pot to the shop to have a trifle 
of soldering done which would restore its usefulness, 
and the tinman refused to touch it. He would sell 
me a new pot, price two dollars and fifty cents, but 
he would not do twenty-five cents' worth of work on 
the old one. " It was too much bother to do small 
jobs." 

I did not give up my cofTee-pot, which made such 
incomparable coffee, but waited until I found an old- 
fashioned tinner who for thirty cents gave back the pot 
ready to last longer than a new one. It often happens 
that the first of any convenience manufactured, es- 
pecially of patent articles, are much better made than 
any after, and you have better wear from an old 



A SCREW LOOSE. 213 

thing mended than from a new and inferior one. 
Don't tell me you can't use a soldering iron or a saw. 
I know a dozen women as clever with such things as 
their brothers. If you don't know how at first, you can 
learn by practice ; and you may as well do your own 
bungling and botching as pay workmen for it, and 
most of them botch repairs anyhow. There is noth- 
ing in the ordinary repairs of a house, in tin, wood, or 
iron, painting or puttying, which is not as easy for a 
girl or woman as half the work which properly falls to 
her share. For instance, the door of a closet sticks, 
and every time it is opened you must work and coax 
it, bear down on the handle or kick the panel before 
it will budge. I have seen families worry with a 
door for years without the energy to put it in order. 
You can see by the mark on the floor or frame what 
the matter is. The door needs planing off the eighth 
of an inch on some corner. The best way to cure it 
is to take it off the hinges, and have the edge planed 
true ; but this is too heavy for you, though I have 
seen a slender woman take a door down, trim it with 
her jack-plane, and put it up in less time than one 
could send for a carpenter. This trouble you can 



214 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

remedy by paring the corner very carefully with 
a sharp knife, and rubbing it smooth with sand- 
paper. A window rattles at night, disturbing the 
sleep of every one near it. Whittle out two small 
wedges of hard wood to fit between the sash and 
window-frame, and the clatter is stopped. 

But the question is where to find a bit of hard 
wood when wanted. An old slate frame was burned 
up last week of seasoned maple, just right for such 
uses. The odd block from the baby's old set would 
do, but that was burned too. Better keep a box to 
save such things. A window shade hangs awry, a 
distress to sight, and to the hand of any one w^ho 
wants to pull it up. Usually such things hang till the 
shade is half ruined. Take it down at once. Your 
fine screw-driver pries out the little nails easily; the 
little clamp which screws on the table holds roller 
and holland straight at one end, while you tack the 
other with your sure-headed hammer. A tiny rivet 
is wanting for the roller cap — somebody brushed it 
off the window sill when it fell, and thought no more 
about it. You can't get such a rivet short of the 
factory where the curtain fixtures were made ; dealers 



A SCREW LOOSE. 215 

do not keep them. You must put up another socket. 
There has been one calmly rusting on the wash- 
room window these three months. What a rusty, 
disagreeable object to touch ! Boil it in your lye-can 
a few moments ; it comes out clean and bright. The 
screws have worn the wood in the screw-holes because 
somebody tried to pry them out with the hatchet, like 
nails, the last time the shades were taken down, in- 
stead of unscrewing them. Use a size larger screw. 
Where to find them ? It seems to me that for three 
months I have seen screws, nails, rivets, wherever 
such things ought not to be — on the kitchen mantel- 
piece last week, on the flower-stand week before, on 
the window in Willie's room, or the sidelight in the 
hall where he tucked them before darting out to play. 
Of course they are not to be found now. But I'll tell 
you where they ought to be after this — in one of the 
compartments of your tray, where every such thing as 
a fixture, or part of a fixture, should be kept, together 
with tacks, brads, nuts, and all the things which are 
useless till they prove invaluable. 

To gather these things is the use of those handy 
modern articles known as catchalls. Every room in 



2i6 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

the house should have one of these. A cigar-box, 
decorated, makes a good one to stand on the mantel 
and receive odds and ends, from pens to nails, old 
keys, bits of metal, or hard wood, waste paper, rags 
and strings going into a waste-basket fanciful enough 
to disguise the litter it contains. 

Nobody wants to run to the kitchen closet and 
work tray with every nail, or bit of rubbish, but it is 
dropped in the little carved catchall and nobody the 
wiser till the end of the week, when all these recep- 
tacles are to be emptied, contents sorted, and each 
kind go to its own place, the rags to the big rag bag 
in the stair closet, the hardware to the scrap tray 
where nails of one size drop in their division, screws 
in theirs, nuts and bolts in their own, and pieces 
of seasoned hard wood go in a box by themselves, 
ready for the boys' jack-knives or your '* Boston 
knife," when wanted. The use of tools will teach you 
the worth of such material. Have a place for it, with 
convenient catchalls to receive house litter, and you 
will find that it is better to keep a thing a dozen 
years till you want it, than to once want it, and be 
without. 



A SCREW LOOSE. 217 

So, when Willie splits up the store boxes for kind- 
ling, teach him to draw out all the long, slender nails 
first, and put them away, because such nails are best 
for holding boards together, and are not commonly 
sold. That bit of hoop iron will serve to brace your 
trunk when it begins to gape at corners. Those little, 
long nails from the raisin-boxes are the only ones 
to tack the corners of trunk trays so that they will 
hold, and hold all the better for being bound Ivith 
that thin brass off a foreign package you were just 
going to throw away. Willie wants new partitions in 
his insect cases. He can whittle them out of the soft 
wood of broken clothes pins. Or he wants to line his 
rabbit hutch so the inmates cannot gnaw their way 
through. Bricks are out of the question, but tomato 
cans are not. Heat them, when empty, till the solder 
melts, and the ends drop out, when you have square 
pieces of tin which need hammering or rolling flat to 
fit them for lining or roofing small pens. Any boy 
can nail these pieces around the lower part of a rab- 
bit pen or chicken house, making it both rabbit and 
rat proof. And this is one of a hundred ways in 
which rubbish can be turned to use. 



XVL— WHEN COMPANY COMES. 

'IT 7ELL/^ says Judith Purvear, opening her hand- 

^ some fur-lined circular, and throwing back 

her thick satin bonnet-strings, as she settles herself 

for a neighborly call, '' IVe just been to Mrs. Hill- 

yer's over on Spring street, and such a state as that 

woman was in ! I don't doubt she's out of her mind 

by this time! Expecting company, you know — her 

brother's wife she never has seen and her mother 

coming on to stay a fortnight on their way to the other 

brother's, in Maine. You know Penelope Hillyer is 

a great hand to put on all the style she can carrj^, and 

her mother learned it to her. And that little Jennie 

Hillyer is so anxious and so afraid everything won't 

be just right, it's funny. She's had all the carpets up, 

and the paint scrubbed, and cut up her organdy dress 

to flounce the toilet table, and sent to town for English 

preserves and pickles for fear Penelope won't think 

218 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 219 

hers good enough ; and she wanted to know if I 
thought it would do to put the big easy-chair in the 
parlor for old Mrs. Spinner, because the sun has faded 
the reps ; and would I hang the lace curtains all 
round the bay window, or just across the arch ; and 
when I dined at the Wards' were the spoons crossed at 
the corners of the table, or laid beside the dishes, and 
was the bread on table or on the sideboard ; and did 
I think it would do to have colored napkins for break- 
fast, as they did on account of the children — she had 
a set of such pretty colored ones — and would I set the 
cups and saucers ready for pouring coffee, or pile 
them together — she heard both ways were used ; and 
would I have boiled ham for breakfast, or wouldn't 
folks expect it ? Boiled ham for breakfast ! Where 
did you ever hear of that ! JV/iere do you suppose she 
was raised ? " 

It wasn't worth taking up seriously. Such a woman 
never knows when she has the worst of it ; but my 
sympathies went with little Mrs. Hillyer, anxious to 
please her grand sister-in-law, and worrying about 
small proprieties, yet ready to make the queerest blun- 
ders. She went from school-life to housekeeping with 



220 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



very little practice of the latter — it would come of 
itself when it was needed, her mother said. But poor 
health came first, and with slender strength, the care 
of children, and a small income, she had fallen out of 
all ways of living save the easiest, and she never 
knew the art to make the easy-going life graceful. 
The family lived on picked-up dinners and scrappy 
breakfasts. 

Tidying was going on at all hours of the day, 
and was never done, after all; and the poor little 
woman never was through with her work, or knew any 
satisfaction in doing it. She couldn't put more 
strength into her overwrought brain and muscles, 
so as to grasp her difficulties, and sweep them out of 
the way any more than you could roll the ton of rock 
that lies by the road. But, worse than her ineffi- 
ciency, was the coarseness of the comfortable, well- 
to-do woman who could only see something to laugh 
and scream over in the troubles and mistakes of her 
weaker neighbor. I wish I could make you see the 
horror and vulgarity of this spirit which seems spread- 
ing among the women and girls of to-day. " I could 
forgive a woman any fault," said one who knew the 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 22 1 

world, " sooner than contempt of a less fortunate 
neighbor." 

If you don't want company to be a burden and a 
bore, and meet it with more blunders than poor Mrs. 
Hillyer, learn how to keep house for yourself first. 
And more than this, set yourself to learn the stand- 
ards of good taste in matters great and small, even 
of such things as napkins and teacups, as well as more 
serious matters. In ev^ery two ways of doing things 
one of them is sure to be better than the other ; and 
you may as well find out which it is, for these little 
things give the grace to housekeeping which no money 
can procure. Housekeeping ! I write the word with 
a sort of love, for to me it means home-having ! 
Just take down Mrs. Stowe's House a7id Home Papers 
to-night, and read the chapter which has these pictures 
of the noble housekeepers of New England. 

In earlier ages the highest born, wealthiest and proudest ladies 
were skilled in the simple labors of the household. ... By 
a lady we mean a woman of education, of liberal tastes and 
ideas, who without any very material additions or changes would 
be recognized as a lady in any circle of the Old World or the 
New. The existence of a class of ladies who do their own work 



222 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 



is a fact peculiar to American society. In early times were 
to be seen families of daughters, handsome, strong women, 
rising each day to their indoor work with cheerful alertness, one 
to sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third pre- 
pared the breakfast for the father and brothers, and they chatted 
meanwhile of books, studies and embroidery, discussed the last 
new poem, or some historical topic started by grave reading ; or 
perhaps a rural ball. They spun wuth the book tied to the dis- 
taff ; they wove; they did all manner of fine needlework; they 
made lace, painted flowers — in short, in the boundless con- 
sciousness of activity, invention, and perfect health, set them- 
selves to any work of which they had ever read or thought. 
The amount of fancy work done in our day by girls who have 
nothing else to do will not equal what was done by those who 
performed, in addition, the whole work of the family. Those 
remarkable women of old were in a measure made by circum- 
stances. There were no servants to be had, and so children 
were trained to . habits of industry and mechanical adroitness 
from the cradle. Every movement was calculated, and she who 
took two steps when one would do lost her reputation for fac- 
ulty. Now if every young woman learned to do housework and 
cultivated her practical faculties in early life she would in the 
first place be more likely to keep her servants, or would avoid 
that wear and tear of ill success in those matters on which fam- 
ily health and temper mainly depend. 

The spirit of the chapter is condensed into the par 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 223 

agraph. Such young housekeepers as Mrs. Stowe 
describes are yet to be found in our American soci- 
ety, where they are its flower, of a kind which will 
come into cultivation again with the true damask 
rose and clove gilly-flower for which florists are begin- 
ning to look in old-fashioned gardens. It is a becom- 
ing ambition for any girl to aim at being one of them. 
And the final pride of housekeeping is to receive 
company well, so that you will not find it a burden, 
nor those who come to your house find themselves 
less comfortable than in their own. 

Of course to do this, you will have to learn to 
treat yourself well ; not like the genteel ladies we 
read of, who have hash and gingerbread lunch served 
with the same ceremony as a state dinner, to keep 
the children and servant-maid in training, but in that 
easy, well-mannered way which is neither slovenly 
when alone or stiff in company. 

Two safe rules for entertaining are : Seldom apol- 
ogize ; never pretend. If you don't have dinner in 
three courses beside dessert every day, and you kno7D 
Henrietta or Penelope doesn't either, why trouble 
yourself and the maid with changes of plates, and 



224 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

bringing in coffee in the small cups, and having out 
the finger-bowls that you use precisely a dozen times 
a year? The girl is nervous for fear she will not 
hand the cups, or use the berry service right, and 
you are secretly nervous for fear she may drop the 
precious ware, and forget to talk amusingly, and Pene- 
lope sees through it all. That's all you get by this 
bit of pretence. But you can every day train the 
girl or train yourself to wait on the table dexterously 
and quickly, which is the greatest comfort at any 
dinner, whether of herbs or roast fillet, with game 
removes, and the cloth and napkins may be alwa3^s 
fresh and well-ironed, not starched so that they slip 
from handling, or ironed askew with machine hems 
drawn and shrunk in washing. 

The dishes may be ranged orderly on the table, 
and unsightly things removed at once, like the shells 
of baked potatoes and the oatmeal saucers, when 
used. To do this without disturbance, you want the 
little side-table, with two or three shelves to stand 
at your elbow while presiding at meals, with relays of 
dessert plates or dessert itself, extra spoons, knives 
and napkins, a bowl of hot water, and nice towel if 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 225 

spoons and things need washing to go around for dif- 
ferent courses, while the lower shelf may receive the 
soiled plates, and keep them out of sight. One house- 
keeper I know has her bright little single oil stove 
with its bright brass and nickel-trimmings on such a 
table, and bakes her delicate griddle-cakes, boils eggs, 
or broils cutlets on a covered broiler while at the 
table. Why not? She does not wish to lose the 
cheery breakfast chat with family and guest, so she 
makes her work becoming enough to bring into the 
room with them. The batter is in a smooth, clay jar, 
modeled for decoration, but remarkably good she 
finds for kitchen use, or in one of those embossed 
stone-ware mugs oiFlandres gres which you find at the 
German importers. The chops, or steak, neatly 
trimmed, are on a covered plate, to be cooked in a 
sheet iron broiler and served smoking hot to each 
person, just as the famous Beefsteak Club of London 
serves them in the grill-room to its titled members 
from its silver gridirons. It is all done like a lady, 
noiselessly and quickly, so that it is a treat to take a 
breakfast from her hands. 

Breakfast over, such a woman will see that her 



226 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

guest is comfortably bestowed somewhere, before 
going to her own work. A visitor cannot expect you 
to devote your whole time to her, and you would 
both grow tired of each other probably, if you did. 
Of course if your cousin or old schoolmate from 
Minnesota or Idaho or Tahiti has come to her old 
home for a visit which she only expects to repeat 
once or twice in her lifetime, or the old neighbor who 
rarely crosses her own doorsill comes to stay a day and 
night with you, you will wish to spend every moment 
possible with her ; and this must be arranged for 
beforehand. 

If it is an intimate friend, and you think she 
would like it, take her out in your kitchen with you 
for a cosey chat while you wash the dishes and beat 
up the pudding for dinner. Try to have things 
about your kitchen cabinet, so that polite persons 
will not be frightened to peep into it. One of 
the most charming visits I ever had in my life was 
with a New England literary woman who did her own 
work, and the evenings in her pretty, up-stairs draw- 
ing-room, when she set the music-box playing softly, 
and showed her choice photographs and relics, and 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 227 

told of her Washington winter, or the long afternoon 
drives when we went through delicious coast scenery 
one day to see a quaint and celebrated collection of 
historical curiosities, and the next to call on Mrs. 
Harriet Prescott Spofford and the poet Whittier, 
were hardly more delightful than the mornings she 
went through her dishes and dusting, and let me go 
with her, while we cracked jokes in abandoned ease 
and long aprons. By all means, give a visitor her 
choice, naming several occuptions available. 

" Now, Emma, there's the last Round Robin novel, 
and the Century^ if you want to curl down in the rock- 
ing-chair and read, and the bookcase never is locked, 
or the garden is pleasant for a stroll, and there's a 
nice view from the end of the street if you care to go 
farther ; or if you want, bring your fancy work where 
I am, and we'll talk enough to forget we're in working 
quarters." 

But have things prepared so that housekeeping 
will claim you as briefly as possible; and it is surpris- 
ing how much can be done before a visit, even to 
having vegetables washed for three or four days, soup 
ready for heating up, jellies, creams, tarts, fruit picked, 



228 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

all dusting and cleaning done to your satisfaction, 
relays of clean towels and napkins all ready, plans 
made for entertaining your guest, the piano tuned, 
the carriage in order, even if it is only an old chaise 
to be brushed, washed, and the tires tightened. See 
that these things are done in time and not left to the 
last minute. 

It's a piece of common care for your guest's com- 
fort to see that she has as good a bed to sleep in as 
you can give her. Not only that the counterpane 
and toilet covers and mats are the freshest, but that 
the room, bed and pillows have been aired and sunned 
thoroughly the day before they are to be used. I 
have been put to sleep in a bed where the blankets 
were absolutely wet to the touch with sea air, and 
the mistress of the house next day w^as surprised, 
" for the things had been out in the sun all day less 
than a month before." The fever caught in that 
damp room lasted all summer. PeojDle grow so 
insensible to the odors and atmosphere about them 
that they never can be sure how these things may 
affect others coming freshly into them. You in health 
and elasticity may sleep soundly on a husk mattress 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 229 

on which a person with weak spine will toss all night 
in torture. And you may very properly think nothing 
better for most of the world than your nice hair 
mattress, when your old lady visitor may lose her rest 
the week she is with you for want of the feather- 
bed which she has used since childhood. Or a sus- 
ceptible person will find a lasting headache brought 
on by sleeping on soft low pillows, when a tendency 
of blood to the head requires that it should be kept 
up by three well-filled ones. Nothing shows a nar- 
row, meagre mind worse than inability to comprehend 
or allow for other people's habits which vary from your 
own. You may be as sure as you exist that hard 
beds and no pillows are best for health, and yet it 
may be just as true that some difference in the circu- 
lation or the nerves renders feather-bed and high 
pillows indispensable to the well-being of others. 
Inquire into these likings of an elderly visitor, or one 
who is out of health, if you don't wish their stay with 
you to be a penance." Consult their habits as far as 
you can as to the hours of rising and retiring and 
meals. In chilly mornings send up a pitcher of hot 
water, and light a fire for them to dress by, without 



230 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

needing to be asked for such comforts. Have the 
extra pillow and blankets in the room, and call atten- 
tion to them when showing the guest up at night. 
Always take a visitor to the chamber assigned on 
arrival, as she may wish to put her toilet in order. 
Open closet and bureaus she is to have, for a guest 
has been knov/n too bashful or delicate to appropriate 
them to her own use without permission. See that 
there is drinking water in reach, for one does not feel 
like wandering through a strange house in search of 
the ice pitcher, or like sending some one after it 
every time she is thirsty. Ink for writing, which is not 
conveniently carried in a trunk, matches, and a cleaii^ 
well-trimmed lamp or candle, should be ready in the 
room, and some kind of foot warmer, if the weather is 
at all chilly and the fire cannot be lit. At night, just 
before retiring, have any slops in the rooms emptied, 
the pitcher refilled, the lamp wiped dry of oil and 
lighted ready, the heat turned on if there is a register, 
a nice book left out for a " nightcap," some trifle to 
eat in a plate — a little confectionery, crackers, 
apples, oranges — for one may lie awake hours with 
nervousness when a few nibbles of food would give 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 23 1 

the craving stomach something to do, draw the blood 
from the brain and send one to sleep comfortably. If 
you grudge these attentions, either you can't care 
much for your guest, or you need lessons in hospi- 
tality ; and either way, had better dispense with invi- 
tations till you are ready to carry them out. 

So in food your habits may be so different from 
your visitor's as to interfere with her health, and a 
little inquiry is the safest thing. Don't say you are 
not going to put yourself out for people ; that what is 
good enough for you must do for them. In your 
house every one is dependent on you for comfort, 
and to make your tastes the limit for others is too 
boorish and selfish to contemplate. A rather con- 
spicuous instance is in mind, when a well-known, 
cultivated Eastern lady left a comfortable home by 
advice of her physician, to travel in the Pacific 
StateS: Those who have taken the journey will 
know how she missed the carefully prepared table, 
the ever ready bath and the warm rooms people are 
used to in good homes. After her return one of 
the families she visited made their guest the subject 
of a magazine caricature, the head and front of her 



232 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



offence being that the poor, worried invalid wanted 
fruit for breakfast, asked for a hot bath at night, find- 
ing herself in a house with a bath room, and com- 
plained of the poor quality of the grapes and the 
rawness of the climate as she had found it. Mighty- 
crimes in a guest, who came with a letter from a mutual 
friend, requesting that all attention should be paid 
her. The family who could neither take pains to 
procure nice fresh fruit for a visitor when it was plenty, 
nor furnish a bath which would have been unspeakable 
relief to a nervous sufferer, and must then ridicule her 
publicly in an article, where her real name was given 
with the change only of a single letter, is a specimen 
of a sort of breeding not so uncommon as it should 
be, and will do for a pattern to avoid, I'm not talk- 
ing now of the duties of guests to their entertainers ; 
you have only to answer for your own part as hostess, 
which you are not to slight for any short comings of 
your guest. But I have seen such wretched illiberality 
of spirit between people of a different style of living 
and a thoughtless young visitor who perhaps picked 
the flowers and fruit more lavishly than her hosts 
were used to, or sat up later and burned more gas or 



WHEN COMPANY COMES. 233 

oil than they thought proper, or kept the horse out 
too long for the convenience of the family, though 
not to any real injury, that I want to remind you 
that you don't receive guests to make them happy in 
your way, but their own, and you should either be wil- 
ling to sacrifice some of your ways to them, or avoid 
trouble by never inviting them at all. It is a tribute 
to both sides when people of different families can 
stay a fortnight in each other's houses and part with 
as high regard as when they met. But whether your 
beds and cooking are to your friend's liking or not, 
whether her manners suit your notions or not, one rule 
is binding on both if you would consider yourselves 
well-bred — that the confidence between host and 
guest is sacred. Your guest is not to be " talked 
over " after she leaves ; neither the holes in her 
stockings nor her soiled petticoats, nor the way she 
lay abed mornings, nor the way she liked to attract 
attention, nor her appetite for Baldwin apples, any 
more than she is to report what a shabby table you 
kept, or how dull the evenings were, or what a curious 
old lady your deaf aunt was. Silence at once and 
forever on all that concerns those who have slept 



234 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

under your roof. Do not allow yourself to be drawn 
into discussing their peculiarities, or betray a covert 
smile when they are named, or those who try to pump 
you will be the first to sneer at your loose tongue 
and bad manners when your back is turned. If your 
guest betrays you and circulates anything to your 
disadvantage, content yourself with explaining the 
matter when it comes up, but say nothing against her. 
In your silence, her ill-breeding betrays itself, and 
she is her own worst accuser. 



\ 



XVII.— MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS. 

■^/OUR little note slipped under the door last 
•^ evening, on your way home from the drug- 
gist's, for Tom's toothache drops, came straight to 
heart and hand. You find home dull with the best 
care you can give it ; and as you look round the 
shabby, commonplace rooms, you wish for some 
way of brightening them and brightening life 
together. Life seems rather "grubby" and tame 
to you, does .it ? — a common complaint at sixteen. 
In stories, you know, the young lady's arduous 
duty is to fill the vases and dust the ornaments, and 
I have seen young women who really thought they 
had made the best of their time when they had 
dawdled over cut flowers and china an hour of a 
morning. 

In a world so full of novelties and delights as 
this, where there is so much to be done for one's 

23s 



236 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

self and for others, can one be satisfied with mere 
touches and glances like this? Well might a keen 
novelist of the day say concerning one of his 
heroines: "She was a lady, and nothing else — the 
most charming and useless of creatures." She was 
not a lady, pur sang, or she would have been good 
for something; at least as much as the French 
duchesses who fled to England in the Revolution, who 
made caps and mantles for a living, or gave lessons 
in drawing, and did these things very well too. They 
were taught to do everything better than common 
people, as became their rank. The Princess Louise 
of England is a lady, if you please, but not a useless 
one. In their toyhouse at Osborn she and her royal 
sisters were taught every detail of housekeeping from 
washing and ironing shirts to cooking dinners and 
butter-making, under far more rigid inspection than 
you ever face, and she can decorate a room, or serve 
a supper skilfully, not disdaining any use of her hands 
to W'hich hands can be put. The Prince of Wales 
very wisely insists that his lovely young daughters 
shall be taught different occupations as carefully as 
if they expected to earn their bread by them. They 



MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS. 237 

are to take their studies, he directs, as thoroughly as 
if they were qualifying for governesses, and their 
mother, the Princess Alexandria, who, if stories are 
true, used to sew on her own gowns, sees to it that 
they neglect nothing either pleasant or convenient 
for a woman to know. 

Girls and women of a certain inferior turn of 
mind are fond of thinking of their place in life as 
the woman's kingdom, and of themselves as queens 
and sovereigns of home, which is about as fine as 
these high-flyers can reach. These queens of the 
baking-pans and empresses of the pot lids find it 
consoling to move about their little houses in a halo 
of imagination, like that of the hired girl I knew, 
who confessed to wearing white satin and diamond 
earrings in fancy all the while her hands were in 
the dishwater scraping the fr3dng-pan with her finger- 
nails. I beg you to disdain such shams and affecta- 
tions, and be proud enough to content yourself with 
the plain fact of being an American girl in modest 
circumstances, who is bound to make the best of 
everything with her own hands, and very thankful for 
the chance. You certainly can make your house 

> 



238 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

interesting, and your busy life will keep you out of a 
hundred absurdities and affectations. The funniest 
of common things is the way a girl takes to copying a 
favorite heroine by little pruderies and primnesses, as 
if she were educating herself into finer ladyhood, and 
by catching tricks of manner, she could imbibe a 
whole character. 

If you ever resent the not-over-pleasant duties 
which crowd out so many pleasant things, you may 
take consolation from the letters of Mrs. Carlyle, 
who knew both sides of life. Brought up to elegant 
leisure, the only child of doting, well-to-do parents, 
and full of all the tastes which belong to a bright, 
accomplished, sensitive woman, she led the life of 
a poor man's wife for a score of years, bound to 
extract the utmost comfort and gentility out of a 
narrow income by the strictest economy and clever 
handiwork. Her letters to her old home friends 
are full of domestic affairs, notable cleanings and 
tearings-up when Mr. Carlyle was away, picking 
apart of mattresses, taking down bedsteads and soak- 
ing them to get rid of " beings," the bare idea of 
which sent her wild and Carlyle frantic, making of 



MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS. 239 

bed hangings, which with their linings and trimming 
were a heavy work in those days of hand needlework, 
with help of her hired girls who smashed whole tables 
of china and got too drunk to stand ; how she swept 
and " black-leaded '^ grates, made the cold meat do 
for days to save cooking, and boiled the porridge for 
supper by the parlor fire to save trouble — all told 
in the liveliest fashion, with fun, temper, and often 
tears in the words. But with all her heavy load of 
unshared care, the genuine sense of the woman 
speaks out in words like these, written from the 
home of her wealthy relatives on a visit : 

I declare, I am heartily sorry for these girls in this absurd* 
indolent way, sailing down the stream of time. How grateful I 
ought to be to you, dear, for having rescued me out of the 
young-lady sphere! It is a thing that I cannot contemplate 
with the proper toleration. 

Brave little woman ! She could paper, paint, scrub, 
and black grates, upholster and mend, even to cob- 
bling Mr. Carlyle's cloth shoes all one New Year's 
Day, without over-much murmuring, but the aimless, 
endless young-lady life of dressing, sipping tea, read- 



240 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING 

ing a little, riding a little, and doing fancy work a 
little, filled her with disgust, as it must every 
capable woman or girl who feels in herself the ability 
for more than mere slipping through life the easiest 
way. 

If you look at your housework as the means to 
a delightful home, it will not seem hard or hateful ; 
even the dreaded sweeping day, which I own to 
hating worse than wash-day, leads to the repose of 
fresh, fragrant rooms, and sanctity from dust and 
defacement. It need not be quite so much a penance 
with proper things to do it. For a sweeping outfit 
you want several large covers of glazed cambric or 
chintz to throw over piano, sofa, and all the large 
pieces of furniture you cannot wheel out of the room. 
A bed cover is indispensable in sweeping chambers. 
The good old-fashioned ones used to be of nankeen, 
bordered with chintz stripes and the size three by 
four yards, to envelop everything about the bed. At 
least you can use old sheets and newspapers to cover 
things, if nothing else is at hand. A carpet-sweeper 
you must have, not because it does the work easier, 
so much as because it saves breathing dust, which is 



MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS. 241 

dangerous for the lungs. The common brush sweepers 
are better than brooms, but I prefer the Atmospheric 
carpet-sweeper, which has a fan in the box, that draws 
all the dust and lint into it without any brush to 
clog or wear out the carpet. It is pretty to see how 
it licks lint and threads from the floor, leaving 
Brussels or ingrain as absolutely clean as if it came 
from a steam cleaner. 

A long-handled sweeping-brush for wood floors and 
mattings, and a long dust brush for cornices and 
lintels, make work easy, but you can do it just as 
nicely with a clean broom kept soft by dipping in 
boiling suds every week, and wrapping a clean cloth 
round the head of it for high dusting. A large 
dustpan with tall, upright handle, four feet long, 
saves much tiresome stooping, and is more desira- 
ble than expensive brushes, if you can't have both. 
Stiff manilla paint brushes to dust corners and 
tufted furniture, soft brushes for mouldings, and 
feather brushes for highly polished wood complete 
the outfit ; but in place of these one manages very well 
with a five-cent whisk broom and a soft old cotton 
duster. 



242 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

In sweeping a parlor, first put all the vases and 
small ornaments out of the way in a basket or 
closet, that they need not become indistinguishable 
with dust. Put all the furniture possible in the 
hall, and cover pictures, book-cases, cloc^ and other 
things so closely that dust cannot sift on them 
carefully wiping off dust that has already settled 
on them. With a clean brush dust the upper 
part of the roller blinds and draw them up to their 
full height out of the way. Dust over doors and 
windows before you sw^eep, not to have a double 
cloud to brush down afterward. If you sweep wdth 
a broom, use damp tea leaves, bran, coarse meal, 
sawdust or dry snow to keep down the dust re- 
membering to have these things damp, not wet ; to 
sprinkle only a yard or two where you mean to sweep 
at once, and to take it up with the sweepings before 
you go to the next place. Brushing a damp mass 
of dust and trash over a whole carpet, is not the way 
to improve it. Fine carpets like Wilton or Moquette 
should be swept with the pile, to keep them from 
wearing; and dealers say that Brussels should be 
swept only one way. It is a good rule always to 



MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS. 243 

begin at the corner farthest from the door, taking 
up the dust every yard or two. Take rugs up, 
bringing opposite sides together, not to spill their 
dust ; lay them face down on green sward, or hang 
them so out of windows and beat the backs till 
all the dust is out. Beating on the face sends the dust 
into the firm woven ground of the rugs. Let them 
sun for an hour or two on the wrong side, then air in 
shade with the face up, finishing with a few minutes' 
broad sunshine to take out the smell which clings 
to fluffy mats as well as other unsunned carpets. 

As soon as the sweeping is done, open all the 
windows wide to let as much dust blow out as may 
be, but keep the doors closed which lead to the 
rest of the house. While waiting for the dust to 
settle, go over the furniture in the hall or on the porch, 
using the stiff brush or whisk on all upholstery, 
brushing crevices and tufts thoroughly, and beating 
the cushions with the flat rattan bat sold for the 
purpose in fancy shops. Use the soft brush or cloth 
only on wood, but don't go over things with a 
feather duster and imagine you leave them clean. 
The dust flies and settles elsewhere for you to 



244 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

breathe, and streaks are left in unlikely places. Use 
a slightly damp cloth to wipe off the dust, and carry 
it from the room. Read Miss Nightingale's Notes 
on Nursing if you want to know why a damp cloth 
is preferable to a flirting brush when dusting a room 
is in question. 

The stiff brush comes in play for dusting window 
frames and baseboards after you have wiped the 
frames and swept the skirting with clean brush or 
broom into the dust-pan. Try to dust so that your 
cloth or brush leaves no soiled streak on paint or 
wall — a sort of shading not uncommon in easy-going 
houses. White spots on varnished furniture can 
be rubbed off with alcohol, kerosene, or a little 
wet ashes. Ink can be scoured off with sapolio, 
or if the wood is deeply stained, dilute vitriol and 
wash the spot many times, letting the liquid, which 
is dangerously caustic, soak in. Put a few drops of 
furniture polish on a woollen cloth and rub the chairs 
first washing smears off with kerosene, which also 
improves varnished wood. 

Keep glue, shellac, varnish, a little w^hite paint 
and brown or oak stain ready to touch up furniture 



MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS. 245 

and woodwork. It looks shiftless to keep a dozen 
broken things about till it is worth while to send for 
a repairer, when every boy and girl of twelve can 
use glue and varnish as well, if they only learn. If the 
mirror frame is shabby, regild it with the materials 
w^hich come ready for use, at fifty cents a box. If it is 
too far gone, paint the whole frame over, black, 
brown, deep red or white. If the grate frame and 
hearth are rusty, japan them with the black varnish 
any dealer will furnish for twenty-five cents, and 
give the coal-scuttle a coat while you are about it. 
Is there grease on the marble of bureau, table-top 
or mantel, try sapolio on it first, and then a paste of 
slacked lime and potash, which will draw the worst 
grease out of stone or floors. Is the wall paper torn, 
paste the loose end at once ; if soiled or torn ofif, 
cut a square piece to match the figure exactly, 
and paste over the blemish. Fill holes in the 
plastering with plaster of paris mixed thick with 
water, smoothing with a knife. If the carpet shows 
grease spots, rub hard soap on them, and wash 
off with crash, rinsing with lather, and rubbing hard 
with dry crash. This will seldom hurt the colors, if 



246 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

quickly done, using but little water. Rub rust off the 
stove with sand paper or the kitchen burnisher, i. ^., 
the steel pot cloth, before blacking it. 

You would like to know how to make your sitting- 
room look cosey and "livable," and want some 
hints for the arrangement of furniture. A family 
room needs certain things to be inviting, one of which 
is a long lounge, not the wretched little parlor lounge 
that is neither good to sit or lie on, but a gen- 
erous home-made one, with pillows, for tired people. 
Doctors say one can rest more lying down ten minutes 
than sitting down an hour. Next you want easy- 
chairs. Shaker, cane seat, rattan, wood or uphol- 
stered, it matters not, so there is a comfortable seat 
for each of the family. A wide round table where 
all can find room for work or books is desirable, 
for it gives all an equal chance, and is more invit- 
ing than other shapes. A cloth is in the way for an 
evening table. A book-shelf, not a book-case which 
takes room, wide, plain brackets and broad window 
seats for flowers, a clock, and clear glasses for bou- 
quets, will be the furnishing strictly needed. 

Scrupulous neatness is to be the first charm of 



MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS. 247 

your rooms, which in showy upholstery or bare plain- 
ness, is distinct and attractive as the scent of lav- 
ender. Beside this, the secret of a pleasant room 
lies in what aunt Jane would call "having things 
correspond," or what an artist would call the unity 
of things — what old Caleb who "chores round'' 
would say, unhesitatingly, was the keeping of things. 
You want a room mostly in one color or shades 
of a color. Perhaps you can't do much more in this 
way than to avoid green and red tidies and lamp- 
mats, or purple mats and pale blue tidies and 
deep blue vases, with bouquets on the front, to go 
with a scarlet and wood-color carpet. You can't get 
over the carpet, as you can't afford a new one, 
unless you take the bold step introduced by modern 
taste, and have it dyed deep red, brown, or deep 
blue, when the most obnoxious colors come out in 
different shades, making a fair artistic carpet. If I 
had an ugly carpet, I would treat it to a bath of 
madder dye, laid on scalding hot with a brush, be- 
fore giving up the question. Dreadful, many-colored 
mats and cushion covers can certainly be dyed, and 
ten dollars in paint and dyeing will go farther toward 



248 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

making a really agreeable room than a hundred in 
common furnishings. A coat of pinky white or pinky 
drab paint mixed with varnish, laid over doors and 
common furniture would harmonize with your mad- 
der red or brown or deep blue carpet, and when 
you " do up " shades and curtains next, try a few 

drops of cochineal in the starch, to give them a 

# 
pleasing tinge. You don't begin to know the re- 
sources of simple things. 



XVIII. — SHOPPING. 

'TT^HERE is art in spending money, and you will 

-^ find that knowing how to use it to advantage 

is the best help to a generous disposition. As Mrs. 

Carlyle in her shrewd Scotch way would observe, 

" There's a deal of spending in a dollar,'' if you know 

how to make the most out of it. " To make the crown 

a pound,'' or to make it go as far as a pound, is the 

lesson most of us have to learn nowadays, when the 

world is so full of wants that even the rich rarely 

have as much ready money as they need at their 

command. After all it is the contriving and making 

the most of every coin and scrap and handicraft that 

gives zest and flavor to our possessions, and to life. 

The first thing in clever shopping is to know what 

you really want, and let me tell you many people 

never get so far in their lives as to know this. Take 

an evening to it — make a list of all you would like to 

249 



250 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

get if you had the money. Consider what substitutes 
you can contrive without spending, then strike out 
everything you ca7i do without from the rest, and see 
how far you can indulge in the w^ay of pleasant things 
which are not strictly necessaries. Then write an- 
other list of things you need, and ought to have. 
It clears one's ideas and is a great help to thinking to 
write out these lists with the prices. Then you see 
just how far your money wdll go. 

Don't rush out and buy at the first shop you come 
to, after the fashion of foolish damsels. A good buyer 
never spends money till she has been the round of the 
shops learning prices. You have heard deserved rid- 
icule of idle women who spent their ow^n time and the 
seller's, pulling over goods for amusement, on the 
plea that they were "- pricing " things. But it is quite 
the usage and wholly allowable, to make the tour of 
shops to inform yourself on styles and prices. Take 
the early morning, or a rainy day when few customers 
are out, and the clerks have time to attend to you. 
Say politely that you do not mean to buy at once but 
wish to look at such and such goods, and learn the 
prices first, and use all the despatch you can, not to 



SHOPPING. 251 

take too much of the merchant's time for nothing. 
Learn to be prompt and decided in your choice, not 
to sit looking foolish over a counter of goods unable 
to make up your mind what you want, or be bullied 
or persuaded into buying what you don't really like. 
Refuse to let the clerk pull down things you do not 
need and cannot afford, on the plea of merely look- 
ing at them, for after a certain amount of attention 
he has a right to expect you to buy of him, and to feel 
ill-used if you do not. Be careful about giving trou- 
ble in these pricing expeditions, and you leave no 
hard feelings behind if you do not leave a penny 
in trade, or even buy the traditional paper of pins. 
Don't ask for samples unless you really need them 
and intend to buy. The girls and women who tell of 
the pretty percale and silk pieces they get for patch- 
work by asking for samples, confess to a petty fraud, 
unbecoming a lady, for it is neither more nor less 
than getting goods under false pretences. Be sure 
that experienced clerks know ver}' well whether you 
are honestly and thriftily learning prices, intending 
to buy, or making pastime of looking over their goods 
and wasting their time and your own. 



252 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

Every good shopper knows the best time for buying 
at low prices is when the height of the season is past, 
after New Year in winter, or in July and August. 
All classes of goods are then marked down in price 
to sell them off before the new goods come in for 
next season. Now you will find hosiery and under- 
wear from one third to one half cheaper than the 
same qualities were before holidays, and now is the 
time to lay in a stock of woollen fabrics, flannels, 
blankets, towelings and housekeeping goods. Before 
the spring fashions are out and the rush of dress- 
making begins, all hands in the making-up depart- 
ment of large stores are busy on chemises, nightgowns 
and all sorts and sizes of underwear. The counters 
are piled with drifts of white garments, pretty with 
tucks, ruffles and embroidery at much less than you 
can get the material and have them made — yes — but 
not so cheap or neat as you can make them yourself. 
If the main point in your shopping is to make the 
most of a little money, and you have time at disposal, 
do not spend on ready-made clothing. The gown 
which looks so neat for one dollar, really takes but 
four yards of eight-cent cotton with five cents' worth 



SHOPPING. 253 

of thread and buttons and two yards of cheap em- 
broidery. You can make a better gown easily in half 
a day with the sewing machine for half the money. 
Ready-made things are a boon to overworked mothers 
and busy women who have not time to set a stitch for 
themselves, but they look with envy on the trim, fin- 
ished garments which nice sewers make for them- 
selves. You want to make your own ruffling and knit 
or embroider your own fine durable trimming if you 
are bent on ladylike economies. 

Buy all thick underwear in the between-season af- 
ter the January stock-taking. The fine Scotch wool 
socks which were seventy-five cents in December are 
marked down to fifty cents now, and there are bar- 
gains in good strong hose for girls and boys for a 
third less than you can get them next fall. It is good 
judgment where economy is an object to buy all your 
flannels for next winter before April, from undervests 
to blankets. Save a little ready money to buy when 
things are cheap if you want your purse to hold out 
through the year. 

By the way, bonbons and small wares run away with 
more of girls' money than they would like if they 



254 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

knew it. If one spends only five cents a week in 
candy, it is two dollars and fifty cents a year, the 
price of a good book, a pretty ornament, or the ma- 
terials for a lasting bit of decoration, which the girl 
who has 07ily five cents a week to spare needs much 
more than she does walnut taffy or lime drops. Five 
cents a week for candy ! More girls spend a dollar 
a w^eek, and I know plenty of them who never come 
home from down town without their pound of " French 
mixed." Good candy is delightful and the craving 
for sweets is natural in young folks, but you hardly 
like to think of all the other things it runs away with 
in five years. Just look this question squarely in the 
face, whether you had rather have a sugar almond to 
nibble any hour of the day, or ten or twelve dollars 
more to spend at holidays. If you choose the latter, 
and want to get rid of the taste for sweets, buy a 
pound or two of the stuff and eat all you want for 
once. The girls in the confectioners'' shops rarely 
care for candy, and you can soon break yourself of 
the craving for it all the time. Then if you want it 
afterward, arrange that it shall fall in with your ex- 
penses — a ** quarter '' of chocolate drops is no bad 



SHOPPING. 255 

substitute for a lunch in a day's shopping, or crackers 
and a box of bonbons for the family will give an in- 
expensive treat instead of a regular tea, after late din- 
ner, Sundays or holiday evenings. I give this much 
space to the candy question, because it is one of the 
serious items in a modern girl's spending, and most 
families spend more for it than for their garden ex- 
penses and plumber's bills, if they only knew it. The 
readiest way to manage the candy bill is not to allow 
it as an extra, but make it fill the place of something 
else, as food or treat. 

Then the little things, the spools of silk, the tape, 
hairpins and nets, the skeins of filoselle and crochet 
needles that are so trifling when bought, but take the 
change out of ten dollar bills so easily. The only way 
to reduce these expenses is to buy the year's needs at 
a time, and make the supply last. Count how many 
papers of hairpins you used last year, and how many 
pins and needles. Your account-book wdll tell if you 
keep one, and that's one of the benefits of keeping 
accounts — you know where you can save if you 
must. Four papers of hairpins, and three papers of 
pins, large, medium and small, and three papers of 



256 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

assorted needles are all a girl can actually use in a 
year though not all she can waste. I hope you are 
not the girl I heard of at boarding-school who used 
to pull the pins from a paper and shower on the car- 
pet so that she could always have one by stooping to 
pick it up wherever she stood. It was convenient, I 
grant, but the plan has its drawbacks. Yes, I can re- 
member when the idea of taking care of pins and 
needles was insupportable to me in young lady days, 
when the word saving w^as as hateful to me as it is to 
most girls. But when I go by the pretty things in 
the holidays, and sigh for a beveled mirror in a plush 
frame, or a guipure canopy and coverlet, or an em- 
broidered cushion that is beautiful as a painting, and 
think "You goose, you might have one and all these 
things for the money wasted in pins and findings in 
the course of your life " — why, small economies don't 
look as despicable as they used. 

For the material part of her wardrobe, the first 
thing a girl wants to do when she comes to use her 
needle cleverly, is to buy a piece or two of good cot- 
ton and linen, for a full supply of lingerie — which 
sounds better than the nondescript word underwear. 



SHOPPING. 257 

Let her take a season or a year to the work, which 
will be a pride and satisfaction to her. The dainty 
tucks, and buttonhole scallops, and whipped ruffles 
instead of machine work, will give her belongings a 
value in every feminine eye which falls on them, and 
then I who scribble from week to week without stop 
must pay thirty dollars the dozen for things that don't 
begin to compare with yours which never cost you ten 
dollars. And I never take any comfort in these shop- 
made things either. You may choose for this work 
either the fine Lonsdale cambric at twelve and a half 
cents — not shirting by that name — or the heavy 
India cottons at forty cents a yard if you want fabric 
that will last for nk:e embroidery, or the white French 
percale at twenty-five cents. Or as the thrifty French 
seamstresses and waiting maids do, you may buy the 
finest unbleached cotton with roundest even thread, 
at ten cents, bleach and embroider it for something 
almost as nice as the higher priced imported cottons. 
The hand embroidered gowns you see marked as 
French and that sell from three to ten dollars each 
are made of soft Willimantic cotton at seven and 
eight cents a yard, wrought by fishermen's girls on 



258 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

the Maine shores, or French Canadians in forest 
homes in the long winters of Prince Edward's or the 
Saguenay. As for linen, you will be lucky to find the 
Union linens, for personal or household use, which 
were common a few years ago, and which being half 
cotton were pleasanter, healthier and cheaper than 
the pure flax. Pure linen is desirable for handker- 
chiefs, towels, tablelinen and shirtmaking, rarely for 
other purposes. But in these goods there is much 
to know of the difference between the weight of sin- 
gle and " double damasks," " half-bleached," and 
" blue Barnesley," and true ecru, between Irish, 
Scotch and Saxony or Russian linen, which last is 
stronger and more lustrous than ^ny other from the 
fine variety of flax grown for it. Pure linen has flat 
thread and pulls into ragged fibre, while cotton breaks 
short. 

For dresses you want changes of pretty house 
gowns, in washing materials, which Americans will 
soon learn to use as much as the French do. But 
for this purpose do not choose the pretty satines 
and painted percales, which are meant to be made up 
with frippery of linen lace and satin ribbons, worn 



SHOPPING. 259 

a season without washing and thrown aside. They 
will not wash and wear a month to satisfaction. Buy 
the stout and fine American and English prints in 
small figures, and check ginghams, to be made in their 
own style, not with puffed and draped overskirts, in 
imitation of the latest fashion plates, but in simple 
gowns or frocks, of Kate Greenaway figure if you 
like, such as the Lady Beatrice and Lady Gwendoline 
abroad wear at their lessons, and walks and painting 
till they are "out" in society and wear full toilets. 
For w^alking dress a fine flannel suiting is better style 
than brocaded wools or imitation stamped velvets as 
you know. Learn one safe rule, never to buy cheap 
trimming, such as fringes, velvet ribbons or beadwork. 
Self trimming, of stitching, folds and pleating of the 
dress material is always good, while cheap lace and 
finery stamp the wearer as vulgar at once. Linen- 
back velvet and satin answer as well or better than 
all silk materials for trimming because they are 
firmer and do not fray readily. Lift the velvet to the 
level of your eye against the light to see if the shade 
is blue black or rusty, or if the pile is thick and even 
as it should be. As a rule, trimming materials just 



26o ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

above the medium price wear longest and give satis- 
faction. The cheap stuff is of poor quality, the high- 
priced owes its cost not so much to quality as to some 
freak of fashion. 

For better dress it is safe to buy standard materials 
and quiet colors, trusting the accompaniments to give 
it stylish air. Unless one goes out a good deal, a bro- 
caded velvet dress or cloak for instance will be out of 
date long before it is ready to throw aside when you 
can wear a plain silk or cloth with trimming of fur 
one year, front of figured velvet the next, and em- 
broidered bands or bright colored linings another. 
Do not buy fancy fabrics in cheap quality. They 
must be very good to wear at all. 

In light weight silks, choose the smooth dull tafetta 
or the twilled, instead of thin, shiny gros grain. For 
trimming, buy thick, soft silks. But choosing a silk 
dress is another matter. As deceitful as silk ought 
to be a proverb. Probably not one silk dress out of 
a dozen gives satisfaction to its owner, by wearing 
as it should. I'm not speaking for girls who have 
half a dozen new gowns a year, but when you buy a 
silk dress, Anna Maria, you want something for the 



SHOPPING. 261 

investment that will look ladylike among the best, 
and will not deface or give out under three years' 
frequent wear. Then don't spend time looking over 
Bonnet's or Guinet's silk, but patronize your own 
country's manufacture. Don't you know that Ameri- 
can silks are the standard for good qualities ? Ask for 
the first quality of Cheney's Ainerican silk and be 
sure you get it, for the firm sends out two grades, and 
you want the best, pure silk, weighty but soft, with 
subdued lustre, that does not rustle overmuch, a silk 
for a lady's wear, and which is largely bought by 
English ladies for its excellence. There you have a 
dress to last from six to ten years according to the 
wear you give it, without cutting on the seams or 
wearing shiny. Silk is cheaper this year than for 
many a long one before it, but the American holds 
its own, here and abroad. You may not find the 
best quality outside the large cities — I never have 
been able to — but when you do, you will know what 
good silk ought to be. 

And that reminds me, to tell you and all girls of 
the advantage in buying all you can in the large'cities. 
I often think while passing the pretty things in the 



262 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

shops that I, an old lady, have no longer use for, how 
delightful it would be to send excursions of country 
girls here twice a year to do their shopping. Why, 
it would be like dropping a little fortune into their 
laps, or doubling their spending money. The pretty 
percales and satines down to a shilling that were fifty 
cents the last I remember, the y^^/<? cashmeres at half 
a dollar, Jerseys at two dollars, neat walking jackets 
that a ladylike girl need not despise as low as five 
dollars, and handsome long cloaks for fifteen and 
eighteen dollars — things of really good style, not 
rubbish. And the pretty laces, aprons, ribbons and 
kerchiefs for so little I wonder that city people with 
nieces in the country are not always sending presents 
for the pleasure of it. Of course you can send for 
catalogues and buy by mail, but catalogues have to 
be paid for by the makers and their prices are never 
anything near as low as you can buy yourself, being 
as a rule half as much again as the same goods would 
be sold to you over the counter of the same store. 
And the women who make a business of " shopping 
with taste and discretion" make higher charges still. 
If you want the benefit of shopping by mail, have a 



SHOPPING. 263 

correspondent in the city who doesn't make her liv- 
ing by that sort of thing ; some girl who knows the 
shops and where to buy blonde hairpins for five cents 
a paper, and crimp nets for ten, and lovely ruffled. 
white muslin aprons for twenty-five, and capital long 
spring gloves for a quarter, and Swede mosquetaires 
for seventy-five that won't give out while you are 
pulling them on. You might make the service mutual 
without either paying too dear for it, by giving her 
a percentage or by returning the favor to her family 
in buying their quinces, grapes, honey, and pounds 
of winter butter at country prices, as city people like 
to do. In this way city and country can keep up 
cordial acquaintance and help. Or you could send 
her yards of that pretty linen lace you knit at your 
leisure, or work a toilet set, or do some dainty 
sewing that town life has no time for. Such friendly 
little arrangements can put fresh grace and help into 
many quiet lives, and lengthen strait incomes just as 
well as if the fabled uncle from California had stepped 
in with the gift of the equally fabulous check — of 
which uncles are strangely forgetful nowadays. 



XIX. — SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 

"^/OUR mother sick, and Willie down with scarlet- 
fever ? Your heart and hands must be full, 
my dear girl, and your inexperience weighs you down, 
you say. But old and practical nurses took their 
first lessons sometime, in just such anxious trembling, 
when, for the first time, life to them seemed to be- 
come really life. 

Patients should be upstairs, as infections rise, the 
spores and scales which carry the disease, and the air 
of the sick-room naturally floadng upward wdth the 
currents of air. If scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, 
or any such disease, is in a lower room, the upper 
part of the house is almost certain to be infected, and 
persons sleeping there are in danger. The best 
place for such a case is the large chamber in the 
wing, cut off from the rest of the house by the side 

entry, where the patient is away from the sights and 

264 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 265 

sounds of the living rooms, and it is easy to keep 
them free from infection. I know a house where 
such a room with windows on three sides is called 
the hospital chamber, and every one taken sick in the 
family at once goes into it. The room is specially 
furnished for sickness, with nothing in it that can be 
spared, to absorb or give off bad air. The walls are 
not papered, for paper absorbs infection and bad 
smells, but they are painted so as to be washed 
readily. There is no carpet for the same reason 
— the carpet of a room holding the germs of 
diphtheria or scarlet fever ready to give it 
to another, long after the first patient is well. 
The floor is covered with matting to deaden sound, 
for matting can be washed with carbolic acid as well 
as boards, and so disinfected. The bed is a thin one 
of hair over a woven wire mattress, which makes the 
most luxurious soft couch, as provided in hospitals 
for weary, aching invalids. Over the hair bed is a 
rubber sheet to prevent the tick from being stained 
with medicine or dressings, over this an old blanket 
to keep the patient from chill of the rubber, and 
then the sheet. A set of thin, old blankets, and a 



266 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

light coverlet, easily washed, are kept for sickness, 
and are thoroughly washed with carbolic acid in the 
water, and boiled, after each case of sickness. You 
don't want to spoil good blankets by washing them 
and scalding as often as hospital bedding requires. I 
learned this care the year we had diphtheria, scarlet 
fever, and chicken-pox, rheumatism with its poul- 
ticings, and a bad case of tumor with lancings and 
dressings, all in seven months. That is the sort of 
training life puts us through sometimes. 

By such costly lessons I learned the safety of put- 
ting a patient as soon as he sickens in a separate 
room, for you never know at first just what an ail- 
ment may turn out. The chill with slightly sore 
throat which brings a child to the lounge in the 
sitting-room for a day or two, at the end of that 
time proves to be scarlatina, or the gray diphtheria 
patches appear, and then to the care of the sick one 
is added the anxiety of knowing that its hot breath 
has been sowing the seeds of the disorder among 
the rest of the household. In sickness, if nowhere 
else, a care in time saves nine. It often saves life. 

Have the room airy, with two opposite windows 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 267 

down at the top, and the bed out of the draft. It is 
better to have a fire in any weather when it is 
endurable, and keep windows open, for the draft 
carries away and consumes the bad air \\'hile drying 
and improving the fresh that it draws in. Keep the 
bed well out from the walls, so that air can circulate 
around it, and have, if possible, a lounge or small 
bed, in the same room so that the nurse need not lie 
down on the sick bed, Vv^hich is not good for her or 
the patient either. An excellent old practice in infec- 
tious sickness is to burn sulphur in the room once or 
twice a day, sprinkling a teaspoonful on a hot shovel 
and carrying it around slowly that the fumes may fill 
all parts of it. It does the patient no harm, but 
rather much good to breathe it, if not strong enough 
to make him sneeze or choke, and inhaling sulphur 
fumes of moderate strength with open mouth kills 
the poison of diphtheria and ulcerated throats, while 
it greatly lessens the chance of other persons taking 
the disease. 

A nurse should be very careful of her personal 
habits, bathe often, for her own refreshment and to 
keep her strength up, and wear fresh washable dresses. 



268 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

that neither rustle nor crackle with starch. I have 
been so annoyed with well-meaning women who would 
take away my breath as they bent over me with odors 
of perspiration, and hair not kept with nicety, that 
seemed to smother the feeble strength left in me. 
And the chattering nurse who persists in talking a 
weak patient light-headed — is there any visitation 
to be compared with her in horror ! Above all things 
learn to shun the art some people have of talking 
endlessly and saying nothing, mincing their subjects 
fine we may say. As I have heard a weakish per- 
sonage of that sort go on, when she knew one was 
waiting hopelessly for rest and silence with a tired 
head, *' I won't disturb you, but I just thought I'd 
ask you so as not to have it to say again — very 
many people don't like it so but I can't know of 
course without asking you, and opinions vary so much 
you never can tell — now don't say one word and 
exert yourself as you ought not to indeed — but will 
you have the window-shade down ? " Don't let your 
ideas flow through your tongue till it must tremble 
like the magnetic needle, and the senseless words 
utter themselves till the nervous patient nearly takes 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 269 

leave of sense and sanity together. Learn how to 
talk in a sick-room. Don't talk loud or fast, in the 
chatter which young women imagine is conversation, 
say little at a time, three or four sentences, not 
more, and then rest, and don't expect answers. It 
diverts a sick person and soothes him to hear two 
other people talking fresh gossip when he is not ex- 
pected to join, rather than be talked to himself, only 
the chat should not be long. O, it is with a long 
apprenticeship in sickness one's self one comes to 
know how light and sound and exertion affect an 
invalid, to lenrn what nervousness and weakness are, 
and how little things sometimes send the forces 
ebbing back to faintness and failure which had set 
hopefully toward health and safety. 

As much depends on the food of your patient as on 
medicine. If one ever learns the right value of food 
and drink it is over a sick person, when the processes 
of strength and growth alter with a few spoonfuls 
more or less 'of the right kind of nourishment, and you 
feel the pulse sink under your finger for want of the 
draught of beef tea, or sip of wine and milk, which 
keeps the fluttering strength alive. Many a patient 



270 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

in a fair way of recovery has been lost for want of 
good food to restore the lost vitality. You need to 
learn much to cater for the sick: to give fever 
patients lemons, acid jellies — not fruit jellies made 
with sugar — but gelatine flavored with wine and a 
breath of spice, little piquant soups, a few^ spoonfuls 
of which revive one so much and which the system 
absorbs as a sponge drinks w^ater, almost, apple 
pulp scraped with a silver knife, or the juice from 
the ripest of strawberries, given drop by drop, to- 
gether wdth barley w^ater made in the good old way 
with lemon-juice and sugar candy, and calves-foot jelly, 
blandest and most blissful of foods. Nervous and 
weakly patients who need building up require strong 
broths without a drojD of fat in them, savory roast 
chicken, game and such essence of meat as we get 
by putting five or six pounds of the neck or shoulder 
of beef in a stone jar, covering tight without one drop 
of water and baking in a moderate oven two hours. 
The jar will be found half-full of the richest gravy 
which is the very thing to build up nerves and brain. 
A cupful of this gravy heated scalding hot, with a 
fresh egg dropped in, and toasted oatmeal crackers. 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 27 1 

is a very hearty meal for an invalid. But remember, 
food for a sick person must be of the freshest best 
quality, for anything stale or injured which a healthy 
system might get over will hopelessly derange a 
feeble one. Remember, also, that if half the care 
were given to the health of well people that we 
take to cure invalids, there would be very few sick. 
Humor the fancies of your patient all the doctor will 
allow. If there is a craving for any one thing in 
particular, whether it is roast chicken at midsummer 
when chickens are scarce, or oranges out of season, 
guava jelly or velvet cream or white grapes, get that 
very thing if you can, and say nothing about the 
trouble of getting it. That will worry all the pleasure 
out of a weak patient, when to gratify his taste may 
be the turning point to health. It is wholesome for 
people in this world to have their own way about 
their personal habits anyhow, sick or well, always 
provided it does not interfere too much with the 
comfort of others, and to the sick everything should 
give way. Lay this rule to heart. 

It may seem hard to give up talking or singing in 
the near rooms because it worries Willie 01' voui 



272 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

mother, and I have heard well people pettishly pro- 
test against "giving in too far to the whims of sick 
people," and talking pretty loudly about the rights 
of healthy ones. I'm ashamed to say I have when 
younger said something of the sort myself. It was 
treated as very ridiculous by a party of summer vis- 
itors that a well-known authoress left her seaside 
house every night to get sleep at a lonely cottage 
away from all sounds. Bitter complaints were made 
of her sensitiveness when the fall of a hairbrush in a 
room overhead broke her uneven slumbers, and there 
was a good deal of spiteful criticism about "sheer 
nervousness," and "that sort of thing being a good 
deal cultivated." If those who are sound enough to 
go to bed and sleep every night, and pass unmoved 
by the sights and sounds of every day life, could once 
know the ordeal life becomes when night after night 
the brain is racked with waking till dawn, and the 
least stir spoils the chance of restoring sleep, and 
under such fatigue the nerves grow more and more 
acute till light, sound and conversation are misery — 
we would never hear any grumbling about sick 
people's fancies. I remember lying ill of brain fever 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 273 

when only twelve years old, and too young to have 
fancies, when the creaking of a door, or any sharp 
sound, sent shoots of pain through my head that I 
could hardly bear. And the old rooster w^ould 
persist in crowing shrilly just under my window, 
torturing me when too sick to make my pain under- 
stood^ till the loving little brother of three years old 
guessed the trouble and put the Saracen to flight. 
Take all pictures out of the room where a sick person 
lies speechless or light-headed, for they torment the 
helpless brain with unheard-of images. A lady once 
told me of the suffering caused her by the family 
portraits in her room when she was lying, as her 
friends thought, unable to notice anything. The faces 
seemed to become distorted and leave their frames 
in shapes of horror to attack her, day after day, and 
she could make no one understand what ailed her. 
For this reason, avoid strange, bold-figured curtains 
and wall papers in a sick-room — better avoid all 
figured things, for the very blankness of walls and 
space rests a fevered brain, however dull to a well 
one. 

Don't fuss around a sick person whom even well- 



2 74 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

meant attentions worry. Even a bunch of flowers 
will sometimes "aggravate" one — in fact I think, 
from my own experience, a great deal too much is 
made of flowers and fancy attentions to sick people. 
I want a well-browned tender mutton chop, sans fat, 
gristle or bone, on a clean hot plate, without cracks 
or specks in the ware, a fresh napkin on the tray, and 
a thick, white towel to spread over the bedclothes 
to keep them from soil, some good bread, the best on 
earth is none too good for the sick, but no foolish- 
ness of flowers on the tray. Sick people don't want 
flowers and food together; the scent of the two 
doesn't combine well, and there may be insects on 
the leaves to get into the dishes. Bring the flowers 
in after the meal is all over, put them in sight in a 
vase, and say nothing about them till the patient's 
eye lights on them for himself. Don^t put your hand 
on a sick person, even in the way of kindness, 
unless you are very intimate — the too familiar, fre- 
quent stroking of one's head is very annoying. In 
case of headache, ask if it would be agreeable to 
soothe it with your hands, and see that they are 
both cool and clean before you touch any one. A 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 275 

warm, moist hand never ought to touch another per- 
son, sick or well. If your hands are apt to be moist, 
rub them with the fine soapstone powder used for 
gloves. 

Study all the arts of comfort for the sick. Better 
is good nursing without medicine than medicine 
without good nursing. Cool a fevered patient by 
bathing him in very hot water, and then fanning 
him, which will relieve much more than using cold 
water at first. Or lay wet cloths on the wrists and 
back of the neck, and fan them, which will soon 
cool the whole body. Wet a hot head on the top and 
sides and fan it to reduce fever or rush of blood 
to the head. This last, together with nervous head- 
ache, is often better relieved by the use of very hot 
water than by cold. When one suffers from chill, put 
on a flannel nightgown and woollen stockings and 
drawers, then put hot soapstones to the spine and 
feet, give the patient something warm to hold in the 
hands, and cover with blankets next to the person, 
which will warm him sooner than you can possibly 
do in a cotton gow^n and sheets.- Hospitals have hot 
water cushions of rubber for sick persons to hold 



276 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

between their hands, but as water is sure to leak by 
nature, there is nothing so good for home heating 
as the old-fashioned soapstone slabs, of which every 
house ought to have a supply. Hot bricks are next 
best, because they hold a tempered heat a long 
time. Cover all compresses and poultices with warm 
dry flannel to keep the heat in, and be particular 
not to let the bedding remain wet when such things 
are in use, for the patient is easily chilled by damp 
clothing. Change sheets and blankets as often as 
the strength of a sick person will allow. It is not al- 
ways necessary to wash them daily, but they and the 
nightgowns, can be hung in the sun, or thoroughly 
dried and heated by the fire, when they will be almost 
as sweet and fresh to put on as if newly washed. 
Hardly anything gives a patient more refreshment 
than the change from body clothes and bedding, 
charged with perspiration, smelling of poultices and 
lotions, to dry, sun-sweetened sheets and gowns. 
Night clothes and underclothes for the sick should 
never be made to slip over the head, but open all 
the way down for ease in changing ; and where appli- 
cations are to be made in the back, have everything 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 277 

button both back and front, or turn the garment 
round. Much inconvenience to nurses and fatigue 
to the sick is saved by these simple devices. 

The doctor will prescribe for Willie, but I will tell 
you a common thing to relieve the smarting and 
itching, not only of scarlet fever, but measles, erysi- 
pelas, and all kinds of poxes and rashes from those 
made by mosquito bites down. It is carbolated oil : 
fifteen drops of strong carbolic acid to six table- 
spoonfuls of sweet oil or almond oil. Any pure sweet 
fat will answer if you cannot get the oil, but the acid 
must be of strength sufficient to heal the smarting, 
and if too strong will make it worse. You must test 
it on your own skin in some tender spot, or on a 
patch of the eruption. It ought to relieve in a 
moment. If too strong, add more oil, drop by drop. 
This is a hospital remedy, and you need not be afraid 
of it. When too strong, relieve the smarting by a 
little fresh oil without acid. Rub this oil over the 
entire body wherever the eruption is seen, as often as 
the itching is felt. It not only heals, but lessens the 
chance of infection from the scales which it brings 
away at each bathing instead of leaving them to fall 



278 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

off in the bedclothes the carpet, or to float in the 
air, dealing disease wherever they chance to light. 
Burn oil bottle and the cloths you rub it on with, 
when the child has no farther use for them, and 
never let an article of any sort he has used or worn 
be carried into another room. Put all soiled cloth- 
ing, sheets and towels into a bag hung outside the 
window. No matter if it doesn't look very nice, it 
is better than giving the entire house a chance at the 
fever. When things are to be washed, lower the 
bag to the ground and if possible do the washing 
out of doors, boiling all linen and cotton things an 
hour in clean water to which strong disinfectants 
have been added. The room with all bedding and 
furniture is disinfected, when the physician pro- 
nounces it safe for the patient to go about, by closing 
doors and windows tight, spreading blankets, mats 
and clothing wide over chairs and railings in it, and 
fumigating. Have a shovel of hot coals placed 
where it will not set anything on fire in the room, 
sprinkle on two large handfuls of powdered sulphur, 
and leave the room shut up over night. You will 
want to leave all windows open wide all the next 



SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE. 279 

day and the day after, if not for a week to get the 
sulphur smell out, but you will not have to dread 
that any one who enters risks taking the disease, for 
a year after. The fumigation is the same for all 
infectious diseases. 



XX. — IN THE STOREROOM. 

TT is very well to buy your marketing day by day, 
■^ the potatoes and carrots with the roast for the 
dinner, and the pears for dessert with the ice cream — 
if you like to see the money spent right and left 
as long as you don't pay the bills. But if your half 
dollar must go as far as your neighbor's three, or 
in other words if you have only one dollar to spend 
where you want five dollars' worth, you must study 
the keeping and buying of food. It will not make 
one particle of difference to your health and well- 
being at the end of the year whether your good beef, 
wheaten grits and plum pudding have cost forty dol- 
lars a week or ten or half that, but it will make all the 
difference between being delighted or discontented 
with your lot in life whether you have a little more or 
less money to gratify your tastes, and have a good 

picture or pretty room, or a pleasant visit to show 

280 



IN THE STOREROOM. 28 1 

for your thinkings and savings. You need not fancy 
it beneath you to study the quality and price of food 
and to count every dollar of expenses three times 
over. Mr. Hope, the English connoisseur whose con- 
servatories, gardens, picture-galleries and collections 
of gems were the admiration of all England, who en- 
tertained princes and dukes with an elegance which 
they could hardly return, was found by no means 
to have the enormous fortune supposed necessary 
for such style. He had attained all these luxuries 
and refinements by wisely spending moderate wealth, 
and he w^as so good a calculator that at his great 
dinners he knew the cost of every dish to a shilling, 
and kept his household expenses without the waste 
of sixpence. Lord Bulwer the novelist, an aristocrat 
and model of elegance living in what he considered a 
narrow way on $15,000 a year, kept all his house 
accounts and knew to a pound how much coal, 
candle and provision his establishment used. The 
sigh test waste was insufferable to him and he knew 
so well how to turn every guinea to its worth that he 
was never under money obligations to any one, and 
could send back the allowance his own mother made 



282 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

him for the sake of sweet independence. It is only 
half-rate people who ignore cost and shrink from cal- 
culation. An intelligent woman carries her intelli- 
gence into everything, the corners of her pantry and 
the depths of her flour-barrels. You have no more 
right to cheat yourself out of the quality and quan- 
tity of good your income should yield than to cheat 
your neighbor. 

Look to the weights and measures of what you buy. 
A pair of good scales is a great security, and a yard 
measure which you can buy for ten cents is another. 
I value scales and yardstick because they give good 
assurance that one is fairly dealt with. One who 
never measures carries an uneasy feeling that she 
is often taken advantage of, but when every doubt- 
ful parcel is weighed, one finds that the pound of 
Alderney butter looked small because it was more 
solid than common qualities are, and the suspicious 
steak being of closer grain weighed more than one 
of flabby texture and larger size. The comfort of 
knowing one is fairly dealt with is worth occasional 
trouble. All good dealers respect a customer who 
sees for herself to such matters. If anything is 



IN THE STOREROOM. 283 

wrong don't make a fuss about it ; treat it as a mis- 
take, and be as- polite as you are firm in having it 
corrected. Too many shops will take advantage of a 
careless buyer while they deal correctly with one who 
demands her dues. 

Bread is the first staple to be thought of, and 
your family of six persons ought to find two barrels 
of white flour, half a barrel of graham flour with 
fifty pounds of buckwheat and corn meal a liberal 
supply for one year. The time to buy bread stuffs 
is just before cold weather, laying in the barrel of 
flour at once, but the w^heat meal and other things 
in smaller quantities because they spoil if kept too 
long. Perhaps you will prefer to change the pro- 
portions, and use twice as much wheat meal as flour. 
Mine comes from private hands where the wheat and 
milling are unsurpassed, and is put up in barrels 
lined throughout with paper, which keeps it better. 
Your grocer will line your barrels or half barrels with 
clean manilla wrapping paper if you ask him. 

It is a mistake to think it needful to buy the high- 
est brands of produce. Learn to judge by quality 
alone, and you will find that "new process'' and 



284 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

patent methods do not by any means imply the 
best article. Indeed experienced housekeepers are 
shy of buying things that are largely puffed and 
pressed upon them. In flour especially I have always, 
doubted whether the highest-priced brands were Avorth 
more than some of the old sorts, and one of the best 
Boston dealers, belonging to the largest firm in the 
city supplying the best class of customers, gave his 
opinion lately that the best St. Louis flour was equal 
in good bread-making properties to any of the higher- 
priced kinds. Always feel doubtful of the abihties 
of a housekeeper who professes that she never can 
make bread with anything less than " Haxall '' and 
" cold blast " flour. " St. Louis for pastry ? No 
indeed — only the one brand for everything and that 
the best for me," said one lofty matron, who provoked 
a smile on the face of knowing ones, aware that the 
best bread flour makes a pastry almost impossible 
to roll out for toughness. Price is very little criterion 
of quality and fitness in provisions. You must learn 
to know^ what you buy from infallible signs of excel-- 
lence, the creamy yellow tinge of good flour that takes 
the print of the skin when squeezed in the palm, the 



IN THE STOREROOM. 285 

fresh wholesome smell, the waxy firmness and unap- 
proachable clear color of fine butter, without the sus- 
picious pinky or deep yellow of artificial coloring, the 
clean bright look of fresh meats, whose quality a prac- 
ticed buyer knows by a glance. Learn these things 
by sight and smell alone. Leave all prodding and 
handling to a lower grade of buyers. A delicate sense 
of smell is to be cultivated, and is a surer test than 
tasting. 

For healthy living, that will ensure good comjolex- 
ions, freedom from headaches in general and support 
the strength you may use the brown bread which is 
common on the best English tables, and is served 
even with strawberries and ice cream at Belgravian 
lunches. The fairness of the Jersey Lily is due to 
such a diet through girlhood. See that the brown 
flour is free from black specks of cockle and buck- 
wheat, and has not too much bran. What is sold for 
graham flour sometimes is only "canaille," or ^'mid- 
dling " with common bran stirred in. In Boston we 
have the Arlington wheat meal, ground from wheat 
that is washed and very clean from other substances, 
and is about as coarse as corn meal. The Franklin 



286 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

flour is whole \vheat ground fine as white flour, and 
nice for cake or pastry. When you have eaten these 
well made from whole meal, the white flour tastes poor 
by comparison. But the mistake of modern dealers 
is in sending out everything ground too fine, by which 
the flavor is very soon lost. The fine corn flour does 
not make as nice muflins and bread as the old-fash- 
ioned meal of distinct grain, the buckwheat cakes 
are not good as they used to be, because the kernel 
is ground too fine and mixed with white flour beside, 
and so with rye flour which makes delicious drop 
cakes when eggs are plenty. If you want varied fare 
at small expense, you must provide largely of different 
grains in shape of meal, flour, grits and hominy, 
from fine to coarse. Oat meal makes puddings as 
savory as rice of the same recipes, and so does pearl 
homin3\ They are delicate also as fritters .and break- 
fast cakes. Just wait till I rummage out aunt Jane's 
private stock of recipes that have been tried for a 
generation, if you want to know what good American 
living really is like, in flavor and variety. 

Butter with our bread is the next necessary, and 
you may congratulate yourself on living in a country 



IN THE STOREROOM. 287 

where both are plenty. The English breakfast and 
tea where thin slips of toast figure with the scared 
looking pat of butter would make one of our house- 
holds blush for shame. " Butter, like religion," my 
old dairy woman used to say, " is a matter every per- 
son must decide for himself." Not one person out 
of five hundred butter-makers knows how it ought 
to be made. The cream never should sour before 
churning, it should be kept in a cool airy place, 
away from other food, never shut in tight jars or 
cans, where it changes in a short time so as to be 
wholly unfit for use, it should be quickly churned, the 
butter worked free from every particle of milk with- 
out washing it or touching with the hands, and put 
down with the whitest salt, sugar an*d saltpetre, in 
small five-pound boxes for summer and fifty-pound 
firkins for winter use. Your care after buying your 
large tub of butter is to keep it in a clean, cool 
airy place, away from dust and all strong smelling 
things, like fish or cheese, and keep it closely covered. 
Once a week take out enough for use in a small jar, 
for it ruins butter to open a firkin daily. 

Five pounds each of rice, sago, and tapioca will be 



288 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

found ample for a month's supply if not more. Keep 
them in glass jars with screw tops, if you want your 
storeroom to look neat and things in the best con- 
dition. Cornstarch, arrowroot, sea moss farina and 
all such fine food should be kept in glass and not 
left to stand in papers till used up. How much 
food is impaired by standing open, or by insects 
dropping in, or other things spilling in, nobody 
guesses. But one sees on one shelf the cornstarch 
package, the paper of raisins, the open sugar pail 
and on the upper one the box of paris green, the 
insect powder and silver polish ready to be spilt by 
marauding mouse or hasty hand, and a feeling of secur- 
ity is not the result. Keep all injurious articles out 
of your storeroom and food closets. Don't take any 
chances with them. 

Canned food is so largely used that it seems 
treason to the convenience of the housekeeper to 
hint that there are better ways of keeping fruits 
and vegetables. Keep all tin cans in a cold place, 
all glass ones in a cold and dark one, for light 
injures things put up in glass as every woman knows. 
As soon as a tin can is opened pour the contents 



IN THE STOREROOM. 289 

into a dish, for more harm is done by leaving 
tomatoes or acid fruit in metal after opening than by 
long keeping when sealed. If the inside of the can 
is corroded with crystallized films, it is safe not to 
use what is in it. All canned goods in glass or 
tin should be used as soon as possible after open- 
ing, for exposure to the air works rapid change in 
them. At least cook or scald them right aw^ay. 

If more care were given to keeping ripe fruit in its 
natural state, half the labor of canning might be saved, 
and we could have not only barreled apples but pears 
and grapes till March or later. It is a great deal 
less work to buy nice sound fruit, wrap it in paper 
and pack in bran, moss or soft paper in tight boxes — 
to stand in some cold place where they only will not 
freeze. Aunt Jane regularly put away the choice 
bunches from her Isabella grape-vine in this way for 
twenty years, and never failed of having them for 
dessert till the first rhubarb came round in spring. 
If you can engage some farmer to gather fruit on the 
twig for you, leaving the stem attached without bruis- 
ing, it will be very sure to keep. Paper barrels are 
safe things for storing fruit, expensive at first, but 



290 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

lasting and worth all they cost for their keeping 
properties. 

Dried fruit is worth more attention than it receives 
since canned goods have crowded it out of use. But 
the shrewd housekeeper will advise you not to choose 
the nice, white thinly cut evaporated apples and 
peaches, which being cut so thin have lost all rich- 
ness of flavor and likeness to fruit. Rather take 
the old-fashioned kind quartered and dried in the 
sun, for the large pieces not only keep flesh and flavor 
but the sun sweetens them, turning their juice to 
grape sugar in process of drying which is a kind 
of after ripening. Dried cherries with stones in are 
richer than pitted ones — and so with plums. Don't, 
whatever folly you may commit, be persuaded to 
keep fruit with preserving powder. It may keep, 
but its being fit to eat is another thing. Twelve 
jars of the finest Jocunda strawberries which I w^as 
induced to put up with fruit powder have just been 
put down on the compost heap, after giving every 
one who tasted them an unhappy evening, with furred 
teeth, drawn tongue, and sundry aches. And aunt 
Jane sits by and never says, " I told you so," in the 



IN THE STOREROOM. 29 I 

most aggravating Christian fashion ! She believes in 
old-fashioned dried fruit, jams and pound for pound 
preserves, and after this so do I. 

I do not think that the adulteration of food in the 
better qualities is so common as it used to be, per- 
haps, and shrewd buyers can depend on getting 
good material if they know how to use it afterward. 
Object to very blue-white cut sugar, which has in- 
digo in it if nothing worse, and powdered sugar which 
will not dissolve wholly in hot water and leave it 
clear, for that is mixed with white earth. Syrup 
with fine bubbles in it is fermenting and not good ; 
if very thick and not too clear suspect glucose, which 
is not dangerous but still is not cane syrup which we 
have a right to expect. Beware of dark or yellowish 
condensed milk, or such as leaves any sediment. No 
one used to good food can fail to detect the unnatural 
cast and flavor of mixed food. 

Perhaps nothing is more deteriorated than ground 
coflee. So do not waste your money on gayly put up 
cans of Imperial Breakfast Coffee or any other fancy 
name, but buy a ten-cent coffee mill, order the roasted 
berry and grind it as you may make the coffee. If 



292 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING, 

you want a mixed coffee very pleasant to drink, buy a 
pound of dandelion coffee, and put a tablespoonful in 
the coffee-pot mornings. It is safe, healthy, and many 
persons like the sweet rich flavor it gives better than 
pure coffee. 

If possible buy cider vinegar by the barrel for 
it grows better by keeping. Kerosene is enough 
cheaper by the barrel to make it good economy to 
order it in quantity. Heat a spoonful and see if 
it takes fire readily when a match is held to it. 
Pratt's Astral oil is the standard, and so refined that 
it burns without smoke or smell, giv^es more brilliant 
light and burns longer in kerosene stoves, beside 
being the safest oil known, and well worth the higher 
cost. The inferior oils are poor economy. Keep 
your lamps and oilcans or barrel in the coldest place 
possible, never in the sun or in a hot room, for heat 
raises an inflammable vapor from the best of oils 
which may take fire by accident. Of course you 
will not keep oils where food of any sort is stored. 



XXI.— PLANNING AND PACKING. 

THE Lawrence girls have sent over to ask if you 
will be so kind as to spend the day with them 
and help in their packing scrape. For Julia is going 
with her aunt to Mount Desert, and Helen and Flor- 
ence have just been asked to join the Farwells wdio 
start with the Raymond Excursion, Thursday, for 
California. When I was sixteen it would not have 
been possible for a woman and three girls to go off 
travelling where they pleased without an escort of 
their own family. When aunt Syra and Mary Bates 
were engaged as teachers in the Female College at 
Steubenville, next to Wheeling on the Ohio, they had 
to wait three months till Doctor Beattie, the principal, 
could come all the way to Boston and back on pur- 
pose for them, it was so highly indecorous and unheard 
of for ladies to leave home without an escort. Mrs. 

Lyle, the rich banker's widow, wanted to see Niagara 

293 



294 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

twenty years before she could find a chance to go 
from Towanda in care of relatives as she thought 
proper, and then while she was taking three weeks to 
get ready, she took neuralgia in her head, and never 
got away from home before the erysipelas set in which 
ended her uneventful life. And you know how the 
Van Allen girls and their mother stayed at home sum- 
mer and winter all their lives in the big square house 
with the tulip borders, because they had no brother 
to take them anywhere and the father was dead. 
Now, in care of a Raymond party, the mother and 
girls, or the single lady who boards, or the young 
schoolteacher can go from Boston or Chicago to San 
Francisco, or the Willamette, in as scrupulous escort 
as their own uncles might be, and much more experi- 
enced in the ways of travel. It is like travellings;^ 
prince^ with the best cars and special trains, every 
detail of baggage, dinners, carriages and hotels pro- 
vided without care, and courteous cultivated gentle- 
men in charge, keeping ceaseless watch over the com- 
fort of the whole large party. I am glad the mother 
or the aunt, and the girls need not stay at home alone 
any more, but can buy courtesy and care with a round 



PLANNING AND PACKING. 295 

ticket, and go to see the world as gayly and safely as 
their brothers and sons do. You may count on a good 
time if you will make preparation with the same fore- 
sight and system which the admirable manager of 
the route uses in caring for his party four months 
ahead. Let an old tourist who has taken the journey 
by excursion and in private party, and who never 
counts on more than a day's warning to go to the end 
of the world, help your girls' memories over the bags 
and trunks. 

A well furnished trunk really packs itself, its trays, 
bonnet boxes, tills and tapes suggesting their peculiar 
uses ; but all trunks are not so well provided. Never 
mind. The old one is solidly built, and the joiner can 
send two light trays with tapes crossing to hold the 
contents, and nail cleats for them to rest on. A 
stout pasteboard box, lined Vv^ith the glazed linen 
known in tailors' findings, makes a good bonnet box 
lighter than the French milliners' boxes of wood, and 
lightness is everything when every pound over the 
regulation hundred weight is charged for. In event 
of a smash the wooden box goes to pieces anyhow and 
the pasteboard one can't do more. Put in the bonnet 



296 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

crown down, and fill it with all sorts of light things, 
laying an open handkerchief first. Fancy work, and 
materials, fichus, lisle stockings, folded ribbons, all 
go in and help keep the shape of the bonnet, which 
must be tied in by four cross strings of tape attached 
to the sides of the box just above the bonnet brim. 
Veils and kerchiefs may fill the corners without crush- 
ing the trimming, for a bonnet goes safest in a full 
box. When you unpack, take the handkerchief out 
by its four corners, with the contents, and the bonnet 
is free at once. Helen will want it at Manitou any- 
how, where one goes to chapel in the shadow of Pike's 
Peak. Laces, collars, and cuffs go not in boxes, but 
in those pretty " portfolios " of quilted silk or satin, 
which lie so smooth and take little room. Boxes, 
except for spools and buttons, must be tabooed where 
space is precious. A travelling work-basket of paste- 
board covered with chintz, to lie flat when packed, is 
the suitable thing ; so is a thread bag with casings for 
spools, and skeins, a slipper and shoe-bag, and a col- 
lapsible one of enameled cloth for soiled clothes, that 
will not let them scent the trunk. All provided ! 
Very well. Lay out all that is to go, in orderly piles 



PLANNING AND PACKING. 297 



on the bed, have the trunk close by and a low seat 
between the two, so that you need not make drudgery 
of it, for packing and stooping over trunks is very tire- 
some work to people conscious of having spines in 
their backs. Don't omit the large sheet of fresh 
wrapping paper in the bottom of the trunk to catch 
the dust which works in, somehow. The heaviest 
things go in first, and these are books. 

A pocket dictionary, Bible, hand-books of botany 
and geology as you like, a scrap-book, or rather a 
portfolio for all the odds and ends of photographs, 
clippings, leaves, that keep the memories of a tour, 
will be the essentials of your library. Perhaps you 
will want Shakespeare and a poet or two beside, but 
on a pleasure journey it is surprising how little time 
there is for reading. You will want some good stories 
to rest your mind when tired wdth sight-seeing and 
ncvelty, but half a dozen *^ Franklin Squares " strapped 
with your hand luggage are enough, for you can buy 
novels anywhere. Take plenty of stationery, for you 
can't buy linen note paper at twenty-five cents a 
pound west of the Mississippi, also take small wares 
to last till you are home again, for the little things we 



298 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

buy for five cents — spools of silk, linen buttons and 
boot-buttons, elastic, hair nets, and such — mount up 
to the inevitable ^^ two bits " or twenty-five cents once 
you are out of Chicago. 

I give you one lady's list of inevitables for the 
overland tour, expected to last three or four months : 

Three papers of crimping pins, five of hairpins, 
five invisible front nets, five hair nets, five yards 
elastic cord, three papers of pins, three spools black 
sewing silk, six spools sewing cotton, the same of 
mending cotton, two dozen boot buttons, one half 
dozen tape, two dozen linen and pearl buttons, skein 
linen thread for boot buttons, wax, three ounces vas- 
eline, the same of carbonate of ammonia, dry, one 
ounce gum tragacanth (for mucilage and bandoline) 
four ounces gum camphor, one ounce permanganate 
of potash, the same oipure carbolic acid, the same of 
citric acid, one half dozen of toilet soap, one half 
pound powdered borax, two bottles lavender water, 
one bottle shoe dressing, one box ink-powder, one of 
elastic letter bands, one of mouth glue, two pounds 
thin note paper, envelopes half as many, one half 
dozen pencils, two small boxes pens. 



PLANNING AND PACKING. 299 

This looks like an odd mixture but it is all wanted. 
The ammonia and borax are to soften the hard water 
on the Plains for washing hands, the permanganate 
of potash dissolved in water will soften the skin, 
heal eruptions and neutralize bad odors, which I 
grieve to say are too often found about the bedrooms 
of first-class hotels, or what pretend to be such. You 
cannot always get lemons, and a tiny crystal of citric 
acid in a glass of water will give 3^ou a morning 
lemonade which will keep off the biliousness which 
steals over one in the long journey with its changes 
of water and food. Of course it is troublesome to 
take care of one's self, but it is also vexing to be left 
at the hotel with a tearing headache while all the 
rest are going up Cheyenne Canyon, or to find your- 
self half blind with malaria when you want to be 
enjoying yourself between the orange groves and the 
drives at Los Angeles. Of all wretched things, to 
be sick on a pleasure journey is the most out of place 
and unhappy. 

The small medicine case, the toilet water, ammonia 
etc., belong in the travelling bag, where also you want 
note-book, pencils, knife, sketching block and herbal, 



300 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

if you use them, writing tablet with a quire of paper, 
envelopes and stamps ready, envelopes directed and 
stamped, beforehand, for writing letters is a hurried 
business on a journey, and a direction ready may save 
a post when one is short of time. Have a bottle of 
shoe polish put up in the bag, for it is good for many 
things beside shoes. That, the bandoline, and laven- 
der must be carried in a wadded case like an exagger- 
ated spool bag, to prevent breaking, unless you have 
the olive wood boxes with screw tops which hold bot- 
tles so safel}^ else a deluge of blacking or ink over 
one's handkerchiefs is the Ipast to be looked for. 
Don't forget a small bottle of chloroform liniment, 
invaluable if toothache, earache or any stray neuralgia 
comes on. Ask your doctor for the recipe, and never 
go on a journey without a bottle of it. And Jamaica 
ginger is a very useful travelling companion that one 
is sorry to be without. 

Better carry your case of bottles forty years and 
not need it than to be found once without when you 
want it. A packet of chocolate in some shape, acid 
drops and fine crackers may well be taken, for dis- 
tances are long between meals on the overland routes, 



PLANNING AND PACKING. 30I 

and I have seen — in a *' wash out '' — a train of 
Pullman passengers on a Pacific railroad wolfish 
with hunger, going thirty hours between two eating 
stations two hundred and fifty miles apart, with the 
Rocky Mountain range between, and not a stale 
cracker or stick of candy to be bought on the dreary 
route. Accidents will happen, and delays are not 
uncommon, wherefore you will prepare for them like 
a wise traveller, with plenty of wraps, and at least a 
day's supply of Albert biscuit, graham wafers, lime 
drops, sweet chocolate, almonds and raisins, for you 
get more nourishment in small compass in such things 
than from a basketful of the inevitable chicken and 
cake. Have your lunch done up in oiled paper which 
is strong, neat and takes less room than box or 
basket. Beside things named, the large travelling 
bag should hold a print wrapper for sleeping and 
dressing gown on the train, collars, cuffs and hand- 
kerchiefs, two or three pairs of stockings, toilet tow- 
els, some with tapes to tie over pillows and give your 
cheek something nicer than railroad or hotel pillow 
cases to lie on ; slippers, hood, or soft hat, and loose 
wrap to wear on the cars, for riding all day in walking 



302 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

dress, bonnet and boots makes a journey more tire- 
some than necessary. 

Old travellers who spend this month on the Pacific 
coast, the next in the Riviera and the next in the 
Hebrides, and go knocking about the four quarters of 
the globe, hardly wait to enter a train till they are in 
neglige as far as propriety allows. I wouldn't quite 
recommend the style of the English bishop's lady who 
went with uS from Omaha to Colfax, in morning 
jacket and quilted petticoat, though it was a very nice 
black satin petticoat and probably quite the proper 
thing in British eyes. If comfortably dressed "to 
begin, it is surprising how little luggage one needs on 
the cars. A small valise, with waterproof, shawl and 
books strapped on the outside, ought to carry all that 
one lady needs outside of her trunk between Chicago 
and San Francisco. Dress lightly with thin flannels, 
for the cars are warm even on the snowy mountain 
tops, and your cloak and shawl will be all that is 
needed on the way. 

I like to pack the travelling bag early, before the 
trunks are done, and have it off my mind. Left to 
the last, one gets tired, and things are forgotten, or 



PLANNING AND PACKING. 303 

crowded like a pedler's pack. That done and laid 
aside with travelling dress and cloak, one can give 
one's mind to the trunks. Books and underclothing 
go in first, then the dresses in trays, with parasol, 
bonnet box and small things wedged as closely as you 
can get them on the top. To have things go smoothly 
and safely, learn to pack firmly, so that nothing can 
be shaken about. All nice dresses should go in wide 
shallow boxes, or be pinned in soft paper or thin 
towels, to prevent injury. See that all flounces and 
pleatings lie smooth, and that waists and sleeves lie 
flat, folded only in their seams. It was easy to give 
rules for folding dresses when they were made with 
plain straight skirts, and you had only to divide the 
skirt into four equal parts, and lay it smooth, but no 
such thing is possible with polonaises and puffed 
overskirts. Fold in the seams and across the middle 
of puffs is all that a dressmaker can tell you. Lay 
things smoothly with no turning up at the sides of 
the trunk. If a dress or skirt doesn't fit in, take it 
out and fold it smaller. If the trunk is too large to 
be filled snugly, make the compartments smaller by 
thin partitions of wood tightly wedged in. If your 



304 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

things only half fill the trunk, pack that half as closely 
as it will hold, and leave trays empty and nailed 
down to keep the rest in place. The moving about 
of lightly packed things ruins boxes and dresses 
together. 

Wrap nice books and boxes in towels or thin paper 
to keep them from rubbing against the sides. Trink- 
ets, or china, should be wrapped in plenty of tissue 
paper and w^edged into ribbon boxes, rolled in towels 
and tucked among clothes where they touch nothing 
solid. Lay framed pictures glass down, between lay- 
ers of clothing. Carvings ought to have separate 
boxes, and lie bedded in tissue paper, or sheets of 
wool wadding. 

Silk in the piece should never be folded, you know, 
because it will crack in the creases. Roll it round a 
paper core, and wrap it in a soft towel or square of 
thin cotton. Any fabric keeps better in rolls than 
folded flat. Nice ribbons keep their color best 
.wrapped in thin manila paper, w^ith oiled paper out- 
side, such as caramels are kept in. If you were going 
to Japan, or the Sandwich Islands, which are the next 
stage from California, you would want a set of tin 



PLANNING AND PACKING. 305 

boxes, and stout pasteboard ones, lined with thick 
oiled paper to keep everything in — gloves, ribbons, 
shoes, silks, cambrics, or the damp would be sure to 
spoil them. 

Just fancy keeping all your finery in tin cake 
boxes ! 

Finish by leaving the things you are likely to need 
first at the top of different compartments, so that you 
can lay hands on them without going to the depths of 
the strata. See that all buckles, straps and hinges 
are in order, before the canvas cover is drawn on the 
trunk, and have a stout strap outside of all, riveted on 
so that it cannot be stolen from baggage rooms, by 
knavish porters. Have your initials distinct and clear 
in black paint, but it is not desirable to have one's 
full name and address. Pack the little rubber or 
crash dressing case, a medicine vial or two, handker- 
chiefs, one small towel, a vinaigrette, notebook, pencil 
and knife in your small handbag, with the red Russia 
leather book of coupons for the journey, and bon 
voyage, girls ! 

This is pretty, to leave you, Anna Maria, a note of 
thanks on the way to the depot, with tickets for a 



306 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

White Mountain tour in July under the Raymond 
escort. The next thing will be a dress rehearsal, 
over your wardrobe for the occasion, and I'm coming 
over like a fairy godmother, with my thimble in my 
pocket, and a needle for a wand. 



XXIL — A DRESS REHEARSAL. 

OF course the spring sewing must be done be- 
fore you can go away for the season. Never 
stop to wish for somebody else's purse as long as 
you have a few dollars in your own, and wits to 
make them go as far as possible. Suppose we look 
over the boys' clothes and get them off your mind 
before we settle to your dresses. Things have an air 
of being at the end of the season, but they must last 
a few weeks till milder weather. 

The worst of boys' clothes is that being mostly 
woollen they absorb dust and odors to that degree 
aunt Jane declares she can smell a boy across the 
room by his fusty jacket. Every closet ought to 
have a window; but as every closet does not, all the 
boys' suits should have a thorough airing once a 
week. On a sunny day, at aunt Jane's, you will see 
the back porch strung with lines of trousers and jack- 

307 



308 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

ets turned inside out, and swinging in the wind from 
breakfast time till four in the afternoon. First they 
are whipped and shaken till the dust is out, grease 
and mud stains taken out with a stiff manila scrub- 
bing-brush, hot water and soap, any part of the lin- 
ing that is soiled is scrubbed in the same way, 
rinsed in many w^aters — sometimes aunt Jane says it 
takes a dip in very weak copperas water to cleanse 
and sweeten them to suit her — sun and wind all 
day doing the rest. Then the closets have the floors 
washed often, and the doors left wide open every day, 
while the rooms are airing, and by this care that 
immaculate w^oman keeps her boys' wardrobe as neat 
and sweet as any girl's. One rule is that no boots 
and shoes are kept in closets with clothing, for leather 
and woollen suits together get up a smell of their own, 
that is to say the least, extraordinary. For one tiling 
the boys never wear their boots or thick shoes up- 
stairs, or in a carpeted room. As soon as they come 
home the boots are taken off in the little dressing- 
room off the entry, put on the . back porch to be 
cleaned if they need it, and then all go in the boot 
closet downstairs, while the boys wear slippers or low 



A DRESS REHEARSAL. 309 

shoes about the house. It was some trouble to make 
them understand they were not to come stalking into 
the sitting-room in rubber boots or walking shoes, 
but the noise, dust and wear of carpets saved by it 
would make any woman's heart glad. The boys pre- 
tend their mother copies Turkish manners and would 
like to have them leave their shoes outside, like the 
Turks at the door of a mosque, but they find stout 
shoes last longer for being kept to their own particu- 
lar uses, and carpets certainly w^ear better when not 
ground by half inch soles. 

How baggy at knees, and wrinkled at elbows the 
suits are, when schoolboys have nearly gone through 
them. . To prevent this, every Saturday night, after 
they have been brushed, dampen the knees of the 
trousers and press them with a heavy iron, or leave 
them all night under a smooth board and heavy 
weight, the way soldiers keep their uniforms smooth. 
When a jacket is worn rough, lay it on a table, 
scrub with a stiff brush, hot water and soap, using as 
little water as possible, rub with a dry crash towel, 
put a thin cloth over, and press the garment well. 
A shabby coat often comes out as good as new from 



310 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

this treatment. Coats must not be hung by the 
loop on the collar for any length of time, but be 
put away on the wire shoulder forms which cost ten 
cents apiece. Trousers and vests should be laid 
away in press, to keep them in shape. 

Always in the spring, after beating, cleaning and 
a grand airing, take the woollen clothes in while 
the sun is on them, and put away, with as little 
folding as possible in large chests, lined with thick 
paper, and plenty of gum camphor in rather large 
pieces among the layers. I hope to see the large 
wooden chests for storage form part of our outfits 
as they were of our grandmothers'. Boxes are much 
better to keep clothes in than leather trunks are, 
and a set made of cedar, or lined with veneers of 
that wood, built very large to receive clothes with- 
out much folding would be better than cedar closets, 
especially if there is a dry attic to store them. One 
chest for blankets, one for men's clothing, and one for 
women's, should be part of the family plenishing, and 
descend as heirlooms after the sensible custom of 
our ancestors. Furs keep best in the new barrels 
made from paper pulp, which can be sealed up to 



A DRESS REHEARSAL. 311 

wholly exclude moths. If you must store them with- 
out any such convenience, beat them thoroughly on 
the inside, brush the fur well, put into a clean large 
paper bag which you get from the grocers, with 
lumps of camphor in the pockets and folds, and 
paste the top of the bag closely. Keep each article, 
so sealed in a separate bag, in a box or trunk, lined 
with camphorated or tarred paper, and paste strips 
over the keyhole and closure of the trunk. This 
work should always be done as soon as you are 
through wearing furs and woollens. Moths seldom 
attack things in constant use, but seize their chance 
if articles are left in closet or trunk for a fortnight 
unguarded. Don't leave your winter dresses and 
the boys' clothes hanging in unused closets or the 
attic, half the summer. Beside moths, the ants, 
wasps and flies will gnaw holes in them, dust gathers, 
and light fades them. The waste of clothes comes 
nearly as much from neglect as from use, 

I know, of course, that girls like to run through 
dresses and have new ones, but to dress w^ell on 
the limited means, old things must be kept in succes- 
sion, and tenderly cared for. I have just been help- 



312 ANNA MARIAS HOUSEKEEPING. 

ing a young lady look over her wardrobe, who has 
been in straitened circumstances since the war. It 
is a sad instance of the way people can come down 
from a brownstone house in the fashionable part of 
New York, a house where the window curtains were 
three hundred dollars a pair, the conservatory and 
aviary cost enough for you or me to live on, and 
my young lady's school dresses were forty and fifty 
dollars apiece — enough to buy a dress for a court 
ball, as ladies who have lived much abroad will tell 
you. First came embarrassment, then a crash in 
business, the fine house and furniture were sold 
at auction, the parents died in the struggle with 
narrow means, and my brave young lady took a place 
as governess. But as if harm could not leave her 
without its utmost spite, the little bank stock she 
had left was lost, and on the heels of this ill-fortune, 
in a crush at a city shop one day, her handsom.e 
cloak, a relic of old times, was cut in three or four 
places, and her dress pocket picked of the last 
money she had in the world. This befell just as fail- 
ure of their income obliged the family she had been 
with for years, to dispense with governess and ser- 



A DRESS REHEARSAL. 313 

vants. Don't say these things never happen outside 
of stories. They never happen in stories half so 
sadly as they do in real life as you will know when 
you read more in that deep volume. This happened 
in the winter of 1884. But this young lady, taught as 
well-bred girls are to take care of things, has been 
able to dress well for ten years without spending 
twenty-five dollars a year on her clothes, by making 
clever use of her own and her mother's old wardrobe. 
Such a marvel of thrift I never saw, and I . wish 
women could take lessons of this sorely tried girl, 
how to make the most of what they have. White 
stockings are out of use, you know, but Emma, hav- 
ing a stock of fine balbriggans, colors them pale 
blue and pink to correspond with summer dresses, 
dipping some in dye made of deep bluing water, set 
with alum, and others in pink dye extracted by 
boiling scraps of crimson cotton flannel. Fast as 
the well-darned feet wear out, new ones are deftly 
made from the stronger parts of old pairs, and these 
are not biftgled, but so carefully joined that it is 
rather a pleasure to one fond of nice needlework to 
see them. Her white silk lace turns yellow with 



314 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

wear past restoring — she does not throw it away, 
but treats it to a dip in the same bath with her stock- 
ings, and has ruffles of pretty pink and blue bloncle 
to trim cravats and fichus. She buys a silk kerchief 
in tasteful color for twenty-five cents, and embroid- 
ers a large initial in the corner for a stylish bit of 
neckwear, but she doesn't go to the expense of hav- 
ing it stamped, or buying embroidery silks at five 
cents a needleful. She dampens the corner of the 
kerchief, and irons it over the embossed initial on 
another handkerchief laid on flannel, and the letter 
is transferred in relief, to be penciled over with ease. 
Odds and ends of silk . are raveled, scalded to set 
the color, or dipped to get the shade wanted, and 
skill does the rest. You never see neater em- 
broidery than Emma does with such materials. I 
am given to contrivance myself_, but my poor thrift 
was left far behind by hers. Fancy ripping out the 
chain stitch embroidery on a linen suit, and keeping 
the thread to darn merino hosiery : Her black velvet 
jacket first was worn as a broad rose-folored sash 
at one of Mrs. Lincoln's receptions, when Emma was 
in the nursery ! It has been successively part of a 



A DRESS REHEARSAL. 315 

dress flounce, and a table scarf, but being originally 
very good velvet, it bids fair to outlast several dye- 
ings and piecings yet. The best of it is that Emma 
is such a perfect mistress in the art of making over 
that her work has not the poverty-stricken air of 
most pieced and furbished things. This is an art 
worth learning and learning well. 

Like a nice girl you always wear a thin under 
kerchief or high corset cover to take the soil from the 
skin, instead of disgracing the neck of your dress 
linings. And you find it not too much trouble to 
wear arm shields in the sleeves, for these contriv- 
ances not only insure neatness but keep a dress 
from the most destructive wear. There is an acid 
in perspiration which makes the fibre of fabrics 
decay, as surely as the black dye in cloth. But 
instead of buying shields, you will find it better to 
make them of thin cambric, brushed with sweet oil 
and paraffine wax, and dried over a hot stove. 
Waxed paper makes good shields, that stand more 
wear than any one would suppose, and being very 
thin take less room in dresses. Then you are care- 
ful to shake and brush a dress well before hanging 



3i6 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

it away after wearing it. It improves all dresses 
to turn them inside out and hang them out-of-doors 
for several hours after wearing. They keep a fresh- 
ness that is pleasant, and this freshness preserves a 
dress, for stale air, dust and secretions from the per- 
son all subtly injure colors and fabrics in time. Be 
careful what kind of brushes you take to different 
materials. Stiff brushes wear out things fast, and 
the best \vay is to take care that dresses get little 
mud or soil to need harsh treatment. After the 
grass is green, the best and easiest v/ay to brush all 
dresses from lawn to cashmere and silk, is to take 
them to a piece of clean sward, and beat the skirt 
back and forth, letting it sweep the sod at each 
stroke. The grass acts as a fine, soft brush, that 
does not fray any fabric, and the work is done in 
much shorter time than by a clothes brush. Grena- 
dines and fine pleated lawns are refreshed in this 
way better than any other. Silk and satin should 
have a whisk of long, soft hair. Velvet should 
always have the dust wiped off with a piece of 
black crape, before putting away. It will grow 
rusty much sooner if not kept free from dust. Vel- 



A DRESS REHEARSAL. 317 

vet jackets, cloaks and dresses should not be folded 
in drawers, but hung by many loops in roomy ward- 
robes, where they cannot wrinkle or be crushed. 

Now what to do about these dresses for the season. 
You have been thinking whether it is best to make 
things over, or buy a few new ones and spare the 
time and trouble of re-making. That depends. If 
you w^ere a very busy person wdth more profitable 
employment for your time, it would be better to buy 
one or two new gowns, and let the old ones go. 
But you see, you have more time and skill than 
money, and you should spend of what you have 
most. A little money put into nice trimmings and 
fancy things with an old gown gives a better effect 
than a plain new dress. Then fashion helps us out 
with pretty contrivances. Your blue plaid gingham 
needn't be thrown aside because the waist won't 
meet in front. Cut off buttons and buttonhole 
edges, and fill the space with a puffed and shirred 
shirt or guimpe as it is called, (pronounced gamp). 
Get a dressmaker to come one day, to fit and baste 
all these things, and then another day to finish off 
when you have done the sewing. The buff dress that 



3i8 • ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

was ruined with acid as you think, is not past help, 
for you can set in new pieces with the sewing 
machine mind, not by hand, and cover the places with 
broad trimming of the new heavy linen torchon, that 
is durable as Irish crochet. Do all piecing with 
the machine, which makes a more even join than 
the nicest hand sewing, use fine thread and press the 
seams open. I believe anything can be done with 
dresses, since hearing of Mrs. Governor William 
Smith's claret silk that was spoiled by lemonade, but 
had thirty pieces set in the body and flounces so 
cleverly that no one seeing it is the wiser. Mrs. 
Governor William Smith's devices, or those of her 
clever little dressmaker for her, were staple remi- 
niscences of my girlhood when Aunt Paulina Tres- 
cott came to do our family sewing. Wasn't an 
India shawl caught in the carriage door and torn 
zigzag in a heartrending way, and didn't Miss Tres- 
colt take a week darning it with the fringes so beau- 
tifully that Mrs. Governor Smith always pointed out 
the spots to particular friends with affectionate pride ? 
I wonder if that shawl is in existence yet ?. It ought 
to be. 



A DRESS REHEARSAL. 319 

Nothing is the matter with your flannel suit save 
the Hercules braid is rusty. You can rip it off and 
have it dyed, or you can take a shorter way, by 
going over it with a toothbrush and liquid shoe- 
blacking. Let me tell you "Brown's" or anybody 
else's polish has a great many uses besides being 
good for shoes. Your black straw turban looks 
dusty and faded. Brush it well and give it two 
coats of polish, letting it dry between, and you 
wouldn't know but it had come from the milliner's. 
That little soft black felt hat would be useful in 
riding, if it were not gray with wear ; sponge it 
with the polish. It won't look glossy, but the black 
will be revived. The boys' hats which turn greenish, 
and the hat bindings are improved by such a dress- 
ing, and your old rubber cloak and sandals can be 
made shining and new with a coat of it. I never 
knew of its injuring any fabric. There is vitriol in 
shoe-polish true, but so there is in many black dyes 
for woollen goods. When you mend black kid gloves, 
always go over the seams outside with a little black- 
ing, and they will look neater. 

Never give up black lace, or indeed lace of any 



320 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

kind till it is in fragments. When merely crumpled, 
wind it tightly and smoothly on anything hard and 
round, a broomstick, the long handle of a tin dipper 
or a bottle, and leave it fifteen minutes in hot steam 
over a kettle of boiling water, which vvill smooth it 
and revive the color. When aged and gray, it is 
time to re-dye it, and all your faded white silk laces 
with it. Yak lace can be dyed a dozen times and 
look as well as ever. White thread and cotton laces 
can be dipped in weak coffee, or tinged with bluing, 
or a dash of pink dye as you like, or you can paint 
dots of bright color on the figures with pigments 
mixed in clear varnish with Chinese white. 

You want a wrap for riding. Take the faded 
Paisley shawl, that has been out of use ten years, 
and have it dipped in chloride of lime to discharge 
all the color, only a moment or two or your shawl 
will dissolve into rags, then rinse in five waters and 
have it colored pretty light blue, pink, or coffee brown. 
Not that you are to undertake this yourself, unless 
you have an Aunt Jane skilled in dyes to help you. 
All black and dark woollens or silks can be re-dyed 
black, light wools may take fancy shades, a little 



A DRESS REHEARSAL. 32 1 

deeper than the original color, and many trimmings 
bear dyeing well. Dyeing and embroidery are the 
two resources of a slender wardrobe — for what can't 
be dyed, my dear, may be improved by quilting, 
braiding or powdering with brilliant dots or sprigs of 
needlework. 



XXIII. — CHURCH PICNICS. 

SO you are on the committee to supply refreshments 
for the festival to which the Sunday-school looks 
forward. A good report of your housekeeping at home 
will certainly bring you into demand this way. 

Nowadays, every woman is likely to be brought 
into semi-public duty of some sort, in the host of tem- 
perance, church and Sunday-school festivals, charity 
fairs and suppers, soldiers' lunches and school re- 
unions, so it must be part of your education to know 
how such things should go off. 

Like everything else in this world, this refreshment 
business is best begun pencil in hand, so that at every 
step you may know just where you are. For each 
hundred persons who attend the picnic, or the excur- 
sion, which is the name for the old " Sunday-school 
celebration,'' your committee must secure a certain 

amount of food, which the families of the congregation 

322 



CHURCH PICNICS. 323 

agree to provide. Experienced housekeepers know 
pretty well how much a given number of hungry peo- 
ple will eat, and your Sunday-school friends should 
find a liberal supply, for no church should ever bear 
the reproach of stingy doings in its festivals. The first 
injunction ever given for such matters and the only one 
needed, should hang in every vestry and committee 
room, and every Christian take it to heart : " Let every- 
thing he done decently (that is respectably, or hand- 
somely, as the Greek would be rendered to-day in our 
own phrase) and in order;'' that is systematically, 
which I grieve to say is not the case with too many 
church social affairs. The providing is left to an un- 
experienced young lady committee who don't see all 
the families in time to allow for preparation, and who 
leave each person to bring what seems good or conveni- 
ent. The consequence is, a surfeit of cake, but only 
half enough sandwiches, and those of a hasty lunch- 
counter variety, four dozen loaves of gold cake and 
bushels of doughnuts, but not crisp cookies enough to 
go around, or half enough lemonade. People eat more 
cake than agrees with them, and have headaches and 
feel faint before they go home for want of relishing 



324 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 



and right food. The bolder children are stuffed till 
an after-course of jalap and senna would be highly 
proper, while the timid ones go hungry on a slice of 
cake and half a roll, and too many of those who attend 
go home feeling as if they never wanted to go to a Sun- 
day-school picnic again. Now a leisure day in the 
woods, or on the seashore, with fresh air and change of 
scene, as well as change of food, ought to leave people 
with fresher, better feelings, and it is sheer waste of 
time, efforts and parish cake, if you don't send them 
home the better for coming. At least see to it that 
your part of the entertainment is well done,for the most 
fastidious are apt to go home satisfied if they have 
had something good to eat. The credit of the church 
depends on your way of taking up a duty, which too 
many persons slight, and very few understand. Please 
to understand that the object of the picnic, or wood- 
party, or excursion, as you choose to call it, is not to 
give one because other churches do, or to raise a few 
dollars for the library, or a church stereopticon, nor 
yet to draw scholars to your Sunday-school. None of 
these ; but it is the reminder of the Jewish feast of 
tabernacles, the day of gladness in open air and sun- 



CHURCH PICNICS. 325 

shine, in rest from toil, and friendly gayety, in light 
feasting, which stores up strength for the resting frames 
to take to the daily work of the next weeks. Yes, you 
may smile, but the underlying fact of all our social 
feasting, the reason why all our holidays and rejoic- 
ings are celebrated with richer and more varied eating, 
is that in the repose of muscle and lightness of spirits, 
the body can digest and accumulate a little surplus of 
strength to meet the wear of life again. As the good 
dinner Victor Hugo gave poor children once a week 
kept up their health in spite of every day privations, 
so every holiday ought to freshen us for the stress of 
work and business. It is a failure if it does not do 
this, and if our parish festivals do not come up to the 
mark, it is time they should. 

And first, see that your party have enough to eat. 
As you wish to provide liberally every hundred who 
come will need the following amount, the same or in 
kind : Either one hundred and fifty sandwich rolls, or 
eight large loaves of home-made bread made into sand- 
wiches; if made as they should be, most of your party 
will prefer these to sweet things, excepting only the 
juvenile cake-sharks. The bread should be baked only 



326 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

the day before, cut very thin, not buttered, but spread 
with beef or ham, chopped fine as if grated, and mixed 
with salad dressing. The sliced sandwich is not easy 
to manage neatly without plate, knife and fork. If 
rolls are sent, part of the inside should be scooped out 
and filled with the sandwich mixture. 

If cold meats are to be served, your hundred will 
call for two small hams, or twenty-five pounds beef, 
five cold tongues sliced thin, and a dozen large chick- 
ens. Salad is relished by everybody, and is not expen- 
sive, as veal and lamb may be mixed with chicken, 
while fresh chopped cabbage, beets, hard eggs, parsley 
and a dozen other ingredients may combine with the 
celery and lettuce. Salmon salad, or fresh white fish 
salad, will give variety, and, in serving, salad only calls 
for saucers and spoons like ice cream. If you want to 
manage with least trouble and risk, instead of borrow- 
ing the plates and silver of the entire parish, let the 
committee order a gross of wooden plates and saucers, 
which come at a good deal less than a cent apiece, and 
will last a number of picnics. With paper napkins in 
plenty, things are more civilized, and you will find a 
load of care off your mind in borrowing and returning 



CHURCH PICNICS. 327 

things. If anybody desires better, it is open for them 
to bring their own napkins, fork and spoon as used to 
be the custom of good society at all feasts only two 
hundred years ago. 

As long as the great American picnic-goer likes 
pickles, you may as well provide them, for the relief 
of possible bilious tendencies. If I mention two 
gallons of home-made pickles, let them be in vari- 
ety — cucumbers dark with spice or yellow with mus- 
tard, bunches of barberry, cauliflower, sweet pickled 
peaches, cherries, plums, but all well-drained and 
convenient for handling. All pickles or preserves for 
picnics should be put up with stems on. 

Take a few loaves of bread and a box of butter for 
people who prefer plain bread and butter with their 
chicken and cucumbers. It is much nicer freshly cut 
and spread as wanted. Mild cheese, cut into two-inch 
bits half an inch thick, will carry well in a napkin in 
a tin box. Five pounds will probably be enough as 
the liking for cheese is not universal. Eggs take well 
in shape of egg sandwiches, sliced when hard boiled 
between very thin slices of bread and butter, so does 
veal loaf, which is chopped veal bound together with 



328 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

beaten egg, and flavored with herbs, then baked in 
bread pans so that it can be sliced. 

No, I shall not forget the cake, and you may depend 
on its being the only thing that other people will not 
forget either. It is easy knowing how much to pro- 
vide. A common scalloped cake pan, ten inches 
across, will give eighteen good slices, a brick pan of 
the same length ten slices or fifteen as you choose to 
cut them. Rich fruit and black cake are not cut over 
half an inch thick. A dozen loaves in all of cup cake, 
sponge, chocolate, fruit and lady cake, should be 
enough for one hundred people, with one hundred and 
twenty-five little cakes baked in patty pans, which may 
include pound and currant, Dundee and Marseilles 
cakes. Twice as many cookies, jumbles, ginger snaps 
and Brighton biscuit, will prove enough for the most 
hardened picnic eaters. Jelly cake and fruit tarts are 
certain to be called for by every one, so ask to have 
plenty of them, if any are furnished. Where a dozen 
or twenty families do the baking, it is as little trouble 
to have things in proportion as to have loads of 
frosted pound cake and only two or three of anything 
else. 



CHURCH PICNICS. 329 

Beverages in variety are too much trouble for large 
volunteer parties. Content yourself with lemonade not 
too sweet, and plenty of ice water for everybody 
taking two or three clean casks or kegs along and a 
basket of cheap tumblers. It is better however for 
everybody to bring small baskets with napkins, cups 
and spoons, or whatever extras are fancied. Remem- 
ber it takes three large lemons to make two quarts of 
lemonade with the most economical skill, and calculate 
accordingly. If you must manage with fewer lemons 
than you like, press them with a lemon squeezer at 
home and pour boiling water on them, a quart to a 
dozen lemons. Carry this, lemons and all, in a cov- 
ered jar, set in a wooden pail, and strain through a 
linen cloth into the ice water, adding to bring up the 
strength if required, two or three teaspoonfuls of 
powdered citric acid, not tartaric. Citric acid is con- 
densed lemon juice anyhow. And don't let any one 
spoil the lemonade by using anything but white sugar 
in it. Citric acid and white sugar with the grated peel 
of three lemons will make better lemonade than the 
washy stuff usually served, where a dozen lemons float 
in slices on a half barrel or so of tepid water which 



330 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

tastes strongly of muscovado sugar. Bottled lemon 
soda, and cold tea with thin slices of lemon in it, with 
sugar but no milk are popular, but do have them iced, 
for fiat beverages well sunned in July air savor too 
much of cheap excursions. Iced milk with the cream 
in, may be taken in jugs, but the best way of carrying 
all such things is in a half-barrel or firkins, half filled 
with pounded ice and sawdust, in which the bottles, 
jugs and pails can be set, the whole covered with many 
layers of paper, and a piece of carpet. 

Pack the plates and saucers with layers of clean 
paper between each two, and have thin bars of wood 
fastened over the top of the basket to hold the pile 
firmly that it cannot shake and break. Insist that all 
the tablecloths must be marked with the owners' 
names, and all the tableware can be marked with 
initials by a match dipped in turpentine varnish and 
lampblack, or any black paint that will not wash off 
at once. An hour spent at the vestry marking all 
things sent will save a week's trouble hunting and re- 
turning stray articles, beside endless heart burnings 
over lost property. 

If you must have hot tea and coffee, or hot bouillion 



CHURCH PICNICS. 33 1 

or chowder, which are popular picnic fare in different 
parts of the country, the easiest way to get them up is 
to carry a kerosene stove and light it in the w^agon 
which takes the baskets. A shelter is easily rigged in 
the fashion of emigrant wagons, with a light frame 
covered by unbleached cotton or awning cloth, which 
makes the cook business lighter, for it is no easy mat- 
ter to boil coffee and make soup with the wind puffing 
smoke in one's face from every quarter. 

If you w^ant the older ladies to enjoy the picnic, and 
go home without fatigue and neuralgic twinges, provide 
all the canvas camp-chairs, mats and pieces of carpets 
possible to give people easy seats. Hammocks and 
swing-chairs add much to the real comfort of such 
parties, for to tell the truth, most of us elders enjoy 
our easy-chairs out of the draft, on our own shady 
piazzas, better than any picnic between here and Gal- 
veston, and the younger folk are not averse to some- 
thing better than a backless seat on the ground, with 
the damp striking through thin dresses. 

It ought to be understood that a simple, durable 
style of dress is the only one for picnics and wood 
parties. Let white muslin and organdy suits be 



332 ANNA MARIA S HOUSEKEEPING. 

frowned down as bad taste, and pretty summer flan- 
nels, satines and prints be worn instead. With bright 
ribbons and flowers such dresses are festal enough for 
any occasion of the kind, nor should wraps be forgot- 
ten in case of sudden change in the weather. Have 
these all ticketed with the owner's name on a tag, tied 
up in close parcels and sent in the store wagon with 
the baskets and picnic equipage generally. A locked 
box will prove the safest thing to carry them in and it 
should be the business of some careful young fellow to 
look after the contents and deliver them, as an ex- 
pressman hands out parcels. If your party is a large 
one, of a hundred or over, a system of checks for wraps 
will be the easiest and safest for everybody. You 
can't have any fun without these cares, and it is so 
much easier taking care before than after — always. A 
•summer shower comes up, or the wind changes, and 
people are distracted trying to find shawls and cloaks, 
unless they "hang on to them " as the prudent ones 
do, and spoil their comfort carrying wraps all day. 

What is left at picnics ought not to be wasted in 
the wholesale manner common. I have seen wagon 
loads of young people pelting each other with the half- 



CHURCH PICNICS. 333 

hundred cream cakes left from lunch, and after a sol- 
diers' lunch furnished by the town ladies on parade- 
day, the regiments have flung barrels of sandwich rolls 
at each other for sport. Good taste and thrift forbid 
such monkeyish performances. What is left shoud be 
at the disposal of those who sent it, if they can distin- 
guish their own cake and rolls, or it should be neatly 
packed and sent to families where such a treat would 
be acceptable — to those who stayed at home with 
young children and the sick, or to people who didn't 
think themselves good enough to go to picnics, and 
who don't have cake every day. The debris, instead 
of disfiguring the grounds, should be collected in a 
box and go to somebody's chickens, for the sake of 
keeping the picnic grounds orderly, and no stray 
papers or tin cans should be left as traces that well- 
bred Christian people have been feasting there. 

Why not send things to the minister ? Of course you 
send them, not because the minister's family is a de- 
pendent and beneficiary of the parish, but because a 
good deal more is expected from them than other folks, 
in the way of entertaining and giving time to others, 
and it is only just you should help them in every 



334 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

thoughtful way. With people coming to dine, or take 
tea, almost any day in the week, it will be a decided 
help to 'have loaves of nice cake that will keep for 
weeks in the cake box, or a basket of rolls and cook- 
ies that make luncheon easy for days. You do not 
know how the minister's wife has her time broken by 
calls on parish matters or charity, so that it is not al- 
ways easy for her to do a forenoon's baking uninter- 
rupted. She will do her work, and your work, better 
for all the helps and attentions thrown in her way. 
But don't forget the washerwoman, and the poor fam- 
ily down by the mill, who never come to church, or 
the old ladies who live alone, or the sick mother whose 
family of boys are doing the housework the best they 
can without her, or the sewing women who live on a 
cup of tea and bread mainly. The fragments are some- 
times the best of the feast. 



XXIV. — HELPS THAT ARE HELPS. 

'^ I ^HE Gaylor girls were congratulating you last 
night that your mother had decided on account 
of her poor health to keep a girl this summer. They 
thought it absurd in you to follow the old habit of doing 
the work yourself, and vowed *^ no one should ever see 
them do a hand's turn for themselves so long as they 
could pay somebody to do it for them.'' A fine senti- 
ment, that has the right ring of American republican- 
ism about it, that does equal honor to their heads and 
hearts. When every move in business is toward 
cheaper prices and economical styles of living, when 
fire, flood or panic may in one afternoon cut off the 
finest incomes, our women and girls, safe, sheltered for 
the time, think it becoming and ladylike to say such 
shallow things and live up to them. The only safe rule 
is to allow no one to do anything for you that you 
can do for yourself, while turning your time and abil- 

335 



S:^6 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

ity to the best account. Two women in fair health 
can divide the housekeeping of a plain family with 
comfort and time for other pursuits. If one is dis- 
abled, the occasion is clear for outside help, but to 
you and me the necessity is one to grieve over, as Sin 
Saxon, in Leslie Goldthwaite's beautiful story, dreaded 
to have a servant come and derange her trim house- 
keeping. If you could get one of the nice country 
girls with a moral antipathy to dirt and a bent toward 
scrubbing, bred to quickness and thrift, it would be 
better than miners' luck. IVe had such "help," to 
give them their grateful old name, a sunny-faced girl 
in clean calico gown, who cooked a good breakfast, 
served it and had the dining-room in speckless order, 
the kitchen tidy and house settled by nine o'clock 
every day — she would have been disgraced in hei 
own eyes not to have her work done up by nine o'clock 
in the morning — who could see w^hen things needed 
tearing up and putting to rights, and had an instinct 
and energy which left her no rest till everything was 
in order. She had no fear of doing what wasn't her 
work ; she could cook bread, steak, vegetables to per- 
fection, make pies and jumbles no pantry need blush 



HELPS THAT ARE HELPS. 



337 



to own, and if she wasn't gifted in garnishing with 
dabs of beet, boiled egg and parsley, her dishes, 
platters and napkins were always clean, and it didn't 
take away your appetite to go into her kitchen just as 
she was taking up dinner, for no chaos of dirty dish- 
towels, and parings, spatters of grease and cinders 
surrounded her cooking. She had the gift of faculty 
and habit of using it. This is what you must look for 
if you want help worth paying. 

For it is not a one-sided bargain you are making. 
You get the services of a woman trained to nothin^r 
better than the use of her hands and muscles in 
domestic work, at any rate one who can do nothino- 
else for the time. For this you pay from eight to 
twelve or fifteen dollars a month according to her skill 
or the scarcity of help — but that is the least part of 
what you give her. She fares as well as you as to 
food, a decent room and comforts are a matter of 
course, and you bear the expense of her inexperience, 
carelessness, and perhaps her ill health. Your house- 
keeping will cost one third more at least, with even a 
tolerable servant — so far girls know how to use sup- 
plies without waste. All these things count in the 



338 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

wages of an apprentice or workman — they rightly 
should in the servant girl's account. 

For your sake, as well as her own, you are bound to 
treat her with consideration. No woman with good 
feelings will put a girl to sleep in a dark airless hole 
in the basement, or an attic out of repair without com- 
mon furniture. You must give her a clean, airy room 
and good bed, and have her keep it so. It is a good 
rule to have every servant who leaves wash the thinner 
blankets and quilts, air the bed thoroughly and scrub 
the room for the next who comes. If she found it 
clean for herself she will rarely object to do this for 
another of her own class. I use the word class as a 
convenience, but I detest the unchristian, unladylike 
idea that the women of any sort or nation differ from 
the highest rank, save in circumstances only. Give 
your hired girl who does your hard work a good bed 
to rest on, and a cheap set of springs under it, for one 
recovers strength better in an easy bed. The furni- 
ture may be plain, second hand, but not battered, 
dusty or greasy. Have a glass large enough to comb 
her hair and pin her collar by comfortably — no 
pinched seven-by-nine affair. Let her have a stand, 



HELPS THAT ARE HELPS. 339 

bureau, rocking-chair or at least a low chair, and a 
closet or ample rack for her dresses. A bare floor 
with carpet by the bed is kept clean easily, and she 
will hardly thank you for giving her a carpeted room 
to sweep. She will appreciate little things like a 
clean towel on the bureau, a tidy on the rocker, a gay 
hair-receiver and a white spread on the bed. If you 
had to sleep often in rooms with fusty, rickety old fur- 
niture, with bare, stained bureau and table, and grimy 
patch quilts, you would appreciate a neat bright room 
to yourself, and be careful how you had to leave it. 
If the room is nice you can with better grace in her 
eyes insist on its being kept neat, and you will have 
to teach every girl that comes to throw off the bed- 
clothes, turn up the mattress and open the window 
before she goes down in the morning. She may leave 
the bed unmade till she gets into it at night — that is 
her own lookout — but she must empty slops and 
leave the room airing the first thing. It is easy to 
take the clean slop-pail up at night and bring it down 
when she goes to light the fires, and then it is over 
for the day, and the room does not gather indescrib- 
able smells that makes the sleeper in it stupid and 



340 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

heavy in the morning. Have plenty of bedclothes^ 
and an old quilt folded under the sheet, both to be 
easy to sleep on and to keep the bed clean. See that 
the girl has a hot soapstone or brick wrapped up to 
warm her bed in cold nights. It takes the chill off a 
cold room and bed, and often .prevents taking cold 
which unfits one for working comfortably. Take 
care that she has umbrella and rubbers to go out with 
in stormy weather, teach her not to rush out of a 
heated kitchen to the yard with bare head and arms 
chilly days, and give her good chance for baths with a 
warm room and hot water, for nothing makes one feel 
more active and like work than a hot bath. Make 
one rule : that your help must go to bed at ten o'clock, 
unless on special occasions, and have nothing done 
evenings in stirring-about work except to mix some 
little thing for breakfast. Teach her that she can peel 
apples and vegetables or fold clothes just as well sit- 
ting down, for she cannot be on her feet all day and 
keep sprightly for work. The hours of kitchen help 
begin earlier and end later than those of any other 
employment, and should be made equal by giving time 
for rest and pleasure in the afternoon, /;'^Z'7V/^^ the 



HELPS THAT ARE HELPS. 341 

housework is properly done, as it should be, before 
two o'clock. 

That brings the question, how much one woman 
should be expected to do. In a plain family a well- 
trained servant ought to get all the meals and clear 
them away, do all the washing, ironing, cleaning and 
sweeping, keep entrances neat and wait on the door 
bell most of the time. I know perfectly well that half 
the girls from intelligence offices say they can't do 
this, and in a house with modern conveniences will 
make a day's work of getting three simple meals and 
clearing away, keeping the family on famine diet wash- 
ing day, and finishing the ironing at 9.30 Saturday 
night, after a fashion. The ordinary "first-class 
cook," puffy and fat, is all day peeling her turnips 
and carrots for a plain boiled dinner, and resents 
being asked to sweep an entry or clear a front door. 
When you get such a woman to work, you have made 
a great mistake. What the ordinary American family 
needs is what the intelligence offices call a girl for 
general housework, and don't get a plump one. A 
light, wiry girl will get through work in half the time 
that a fat one will, without half the fatigue. 



342 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

In your family of six, the boys ought to get up the 
kindling and coal, take down and sift the ashes, and 
tend the furnace or sitting-room stove. It will take 
them fifteen minutes a day in all, and the care won't 
hurt them. Your trim kitchen maid should be up at 
five in summer and half-past five or six in winter as 
you need an early breakfast. She should have the 
sitting and dining-rooms tidy, which should want little 
more than sweeping about the stove, and dusting, the 
door-steps swept, and breakfast ready by seven, with 
the kitchen nearly ready for ironing or baking. She 
can hand the cups and plates at breakfast, then hurry 
up-stairs and empty slops from the bedrooms — work 
which must be done early — then eat her own break- 
fast which should be in the kitchen with her own 
separate tablecloth and napkin. A good servant will 
keep her kitchen nice enough for anybody to eat in, 
and there should be a small table to eat from, beside 
the regular kitchen table which is wanted for work. 
Half an hour is time enough for her to wash the 
breakfast dishes and have the dining-room tidy. 
There is no sense in the way heavy-footed girls drag 
about this work till eleven in the forenoon. I've seen 



HELPS THAT ARE HELPS. 343 

a table for twenty persons cleared and dishes all 
washed in ten minutes by the clock, seen biscuit made 
and baked and breakfast got in fifteen minutes, a cup 
cake stirred up and baked in eight minutes by lively 
farmer girls whose pride was in their work, and who 
would have a washing of six white shirts, twelve 
sheets, six white skirts, with body and table linen for 
a family of nine persons, all on the line by ten o'clock, 
and spend the afternoon at the piano, or go visiting. 
They used Doctor Holmes' rule, to work briskly while 
they worked and rest well when it was done. With 
all my heart I pity these droning servants who keep on 
their feet all day, spinning the work out till ten o'clock 
or midnight, do less and feel thrice as tired as they 
need. Better by far get a willing greenhorn, and teach 
her how to work, making the agreement that she is to 
stay long enough to make it worth while to train her, or 
forfeit part of her wages. If she learns well, raise her 
wages as she deserves every three months till she 
makes the full pay of a good servant. Don't be a 
screw in prices, but don't make the mistake of think- 
ing that a girl who won't do well anyhow will improve 
by raising her wages. 



344 ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. 

Try to teach the girl to make work easy for herself 
wash-days by putting clothes to soak the night before 
in warm strong suds, and having the wash-boiler full 
of water on the stove the night before, where it will 
be hot in the morning ; and on ironing days by seeing 
that stove, irons and table are clean, and clothes 
sprinkled the evening before ; teach her order in 
piling up dishes, in marshaling her pots and pans, 
and how to keep tidy in the midst of work. Do a 
little with her, and she will catch your brisk step and 
turn of hand ; then insist on her sitting down in the 
middle of the forenoon for an hour about some light 
work, or with the newspaper if the work is done. 
The time is not lost to you when she is resting and 
you may show her that you do not feel it so. But you 
must for her sake as well as your own, exact careful 
business-like performance of her work while she is 
about it. She is not to make your house anything 
but homelike with her slovenly sweeping, and untidy 
paint, dull fires and poorly cooked meals, with the 
discomfort of work forever going on. Treat her well, 
and you have a right to be teated well by her, and to 
have your work done to suit you. 



HELPS THAT ARE HELPS. 345 

The daughters of the house, in a large family, ought 
to take the care of their own rooms, the parlor and 
guest chamber, iron their own muslins and laces per- 
haps, make the cake, polish silver, and answer the 
door bell when necessary, beside washing china, set- 
ting table and doing light work as convenience re- 
quires. The work can be so divided as to be a 
burden to nobody. In small families who do not live 
pretentiously, one good servant will do all the work 
comfortably, keeping the house neat, serving meals 
well, and being herself presentable for waiting on 
table and door. 

Don't be afraid to treat a good servant kindly. 
Seldom praise directly, but treat her as if you were 
contented, and be friendly, as I am happy to say, 
most American people are with their dependents. It 
looks well to see young ladies going to evening lecture, 
church sociable or concert with the tidy maid, whose 
cheerful face shows she is happy to be with them. 
Don't you remember how kind Mrs. Carlyle — that 
model housekeeper whom one can't help quoting — 
was to her little Scotch servant whom she took for a 
companion one day to the National Art Gallery in 



346 ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

London, bringing home by way of compensation that 
immortal criticism of a Madonna from the enraptured 
lassie: *^Omy! how expensive ! '^ Don't be afraid of 
being kind to your servants, or of treating them like 
the same sort of humanity as yourself, for you will lose 
too much by the contrary course. "The pithiest, 
quaintest turns of language, the most caustic wit, the 
most touching pathos in the world," says a deep ob- 
server, " I have heard not from the educated and 
refined lady in her drawing-room, but from hard-work- 
ing women of the lower class, from the lips perhaps 
of a washer-woman or of a maid servant who could 
hardly spell out her letters from home, or the chapter 
from her Bible of a Sunday." Don't keep an ordinary 
" tolerable " sort of girl if you can help it ; there are 
enough good ones in the world to be found by seek- 
ing. Treat yourself to good help if you have any — 
and choose a girl to whom you can feel like being her 
best friend. Then see that she treats you well, does 
your work as you want it done, makes you comfort- 
able, and makes her labor tolerable to herself. You 
are entitled to this, and it is no kindness to her to allow 
things to go on slack fashion. Train her, as I have 



HELPS THAT ARE HELPS. 347 

said, to system and despatch which shorten her hours 
of work, and make work itself more interesting. Teach 
her your nice ways, telling her the right thing to do 
from the first. It is easier to direct than to correct. 
Take the lead for two or three days and show her 
how the table is to be set and served, how to make 
the coffee and bake the potatoes, and tell her that 
she is to knock on entering the family rooms. It is 
the hardest thing to teach American girls that they 
cannot, in a well-bred family, bounce into sitting-room 
or chamber as unceremoniously as they please. They 
may tap and enter without farther signal, in sitting- 
room or parlor, but no person, relative or servant, 
will enter the bedroom of another without knocking 
and waiting till bidden "Come in." 

The good servants are not all dead, and they make 
fortunate homes where they stay. Don't pass over 
faults that can be corrected — do not grudge any 
kindness in your power to make their lives as comfort- 
able as you want yours. 

Whether life will be this or the other thing de- 
pends on the woman who reigns in the kitchen. For 
you can't even read a newspaper with satisfaction if 



34^ ANNA Maria's housekeeping. 

you have had no breakfast fit to eat, and you can't 
color a picture when your head aches with sitting in 
a chilly room because the kitchen girl has let the fur- 
nace lire get down, and you can't ask company if she 
declines to know how to wait on them, and you can't 
go to the Wagner Festival with any pleasure if " she " 
gives warning and goes off the same morning and 
leaves you with the work on hand and lunch to get, 
nor can you study or write in peace if "she " keeps 
bouncing in about trifling orders just as they happen 
to come into her head. Don't you know Beetho- 
ven's life was ruined by worthless servants, and that 
poor Hannah More's fortune was eaten up by them, 
and more than one woman meeting the world single- 
handed loses all the money and the comfort she earns 
for want of one good and trusty servant ? Thank 
heaven, that can hardly befall you or me, Anna Maria, 
for we can always be sure of one good servant — the 
best of all — one's self. 



MARGARET SIDNEY'S BOOKS. 

Margaret Sidney may be safely set down as one of the best writers of 
juvenile literature in the country. — Boston Trajiscript. 

Margaret Sidney's books are happily described as ** strong and pure 
from cover to cover, . . bright and piquant as the mountain breezes, or 
a dash on pony back of a June morning." The same writer speaks of her 
as "An American authoress who will hold her own in the competitive 
good work executed by the many bright writing women of to-day." 

There are few better story writers than Margaret Sidney. — Herald 
and Presbyter. 

Coniments of the Secular sind Relig^ioiis Prens. 

FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW. 
A charming work. . . The home scenes in which these little Pep- 
pers are engaged are capitally described. . . Will find prominent place 
among the higher class of juvenile presentation books. — Religious Herald. 

One of the best told tales given to the children for some time. . . 
The perfect reproduction of child-life in its minutest phases, catches one's 
attention at once. — Christian Advocate. 

A good book to place in the hands of every boy or girl. — Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 

SO AS BY FIRE. 

Will be hailed with eager delight, and found well worth reading. — 
Christian Observer. 

An admirable Sunday-school book — A rkaiisas Evangel. 

We have followed with intense interest the story of David Folsom. . 

. A man poor, friendless, and addicted to drink; . . the influence 
of little Cricket; . . the faithful care of aunt Phebe ; all steps by 
which he climbed to higher manhood. — Woman at Work. 

THE PETTIBONE NAME. 

It is one of the finest pieces of American fiction that has been pub- 
lished for some time. — Newsd^lers* Bulletin^ New York. 

It ought to attract wide attention from the simplicity of its style, and 
the vigor and originality of its treatment. — Chicago Herald. 

This is a capital story illustrating New England life. — Inter-Ocean^ 
Chicago. 

The characters of the story seem all to be studies from life. — Boston 
Post. 

It is a New England tale, and its characters are true to the original 
cype, and show careful study and no little skill in portraiture. — Christian 
at Work, New York. 

To be commended to readers for excellent delineations, sparkling style, 
bright incident and genuine interest — The Watchinan. 

A capital story ; bright with excellent sketches of character. Conveys 
good moral and spiritual lessons. . . In short, the book is in every 
way well done. - lUnsfrated Christian Weekly. 

HALF YEAR AT BRONCKTON. 

A live boy v> rites : " This is about the best book that ever was written 
©r ever can be." 

" This bright and earnest story ought to go into the hands of every boy 
who is old enough to be subjected to the temptations of school life." 

D. LOTHROP & CO., Publisliers, Boston. 



BOOKS BY POPULAR AUTHORS. 

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lul editor of Wide Awake ; Julia A. Eastman, whose school life stories 
are full of sparkling expression and incisive knowledge of human nature ; 
Rev. J. L. Pratt, who writes with rare appreciation of the needs of 
young people who are beginning to examine for themselves into religious 
beliefs and opinions; Mrs. A. E. Porter, whose stories are well calculated 
to make truthfulness, steadfastness and right living the subjects of youth- 
ful admiration ; the author of Andy Luttrell, whose books, dealing with 
knotty problems, and positive in religious teachings, are perennial favor- 
ites; Mrs. E. D. Kendajl, whose writings, excellent for boys, are marked 
by an earnestness of purpose well calculated to impress life lessons ; 
Mary J. Capron, whose healthful and stimulating stories point to right 
ideas on the fundamental truths of Christian religion ; Rev. Z. A. 
Mudge, a favorite Sunday-school writer; these are among the popular 
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tance to Sunday-school or family libraries. 

ELLA FARMAN'S BOOKS. 

(jvols.j izmo, illust.y $10.00. 
Annie Maylie. Grandma Crosby's Household. 

A Little Woman. Good-for-Nothing Polly. 

A Girl's Money. How Two Girls Tried Farming. 

A White Hand. Cooking Club of Tu-Whit Hollow. 

Mrs. Kurd's Niece. 

JULIA A. EASTMAN'S BOOKS. 

6 vols. J iznio, illust, $7.50. 
Kitty Kent. Romneys of Ridgemont (The). 

Young Rick. Schooldays of Beulah Romney. 

Striking for the Right. Short Comings and Long Goings. 

REV. J. L. PRATT'S BOOKS. 

4 vols., i2mOy iUust.y $6.00. 
Evening Rest. Branches of Palm. Bonnie ^rie. Broken Fetters 

MRS. A. E. PORTER'S BOOKS. 

5 vols.y i2mo, illust.y $6.25. 

This One Thing I do. Sunset Mountain. 

Millie Lee. My Hero. Glencoe Parsonage. 

BY AUTHOR OF ANDY LUTTRELL. 

6 vols.^ i2mOy illust.y $7.50. 

Andy Luttrell. Strawberry Hill. Barbara. 

Silent Tom. Talbury Girls. Hidden Treasure. 

MRS. E. D. KENDALL'S BOOKS. 

3 vols.y i2mOy illust.., $3.75. 
Judge's Sons. _ Master and Pupil. 

The Stanifords of Staniford's Folly. 

MARY J. CAPRON'S BOOKS. 

4 vols.y izmo.y illust.y $5.00. 
Plus and Minus. Maybee's Stepping Stones. 

Gold and Gilt. Mrs. Thome's Guests. 

REV. Z. A. MUDGE'S BOOKS. 

3 vols.y \2mOy illust.y $3.75. 

Shell Cove. Luck of Alden Farm. Boat Builders. 

W. H. G. KINGSTON'S BOOKS. 

8 vols.y i2mo, illust.y ^8.00. 
Voyage of the Steadfast. Young Whaler. Charley Laurel. 
Fisher Boy. Virginia. Peter the Ship Boy 

Little Ben Hadden. Ralph and Dick. 

D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers, Boston. 



2 YOUNG FOLKS' LIBRARY ADVERTISER. 

The Yensie Walton Books. 

These books, from the pen of Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark, are possessed 
of such conspicuous merits, as to secure for them the unqualified com- 
mendation of eminent religious journals such as the Central Christian 
Advocate^ The Journal and Messenger ^ The Ne^v Orleans Christian 
Advocate y The Lutheran Observer ^ Christian at Work, The Dover 
Mornifig Star^ The Gospel Banner ^ Philadelphia Methodist^ Herald 
and Presbyter. 

YENSIE WALTON. OUR STREET. 

YENSIE WALTON^S WOMAMHOOD. 

THE TRIPLE E. ACHOE. 

i2mo, cloth, illustrated, uniform binding, $1.50 each. 

YENSIE WALTON. 

*• Yensie Walton," by Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark. Boston : D. Loth- 
rop & Co. Full of striking incident and scenes of great pathos, with 
occasional gleams of humor and fun by way of relief to the more tragic 
parts of the narrative. The characters are strongly drawn, and, in gen- 
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having those infirmities of the flesh which make us all akin. It will take 
rank among the best and most popular Sunday-school books. — Episcopal 
Register. 

A pure sweet story of girl life, quiet, and yet of sufficient interest to hold 
the attention of the most careless reader. — ZioiCs Advocate, 

YENSIE WALTON'S WOMANHOOD. 

The many readers who have made the acquaintance of *' Yensie Wal- 
ton " in one of the best Sunday-school books ever published, will be de- 
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still further company through life. There is a strong religious tone to the 
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healthful and full of sweetness and beauty. The story is a worthy suc- 
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The heroine is an excellent character for imitation, and the entire atmos- 
phere of the book is healthful and purifying. — Pittsburg Christian A dvo- 
caie. 
OUR STREET, 

By the same author, is a capital stor}' of every day life which deals with 
genuine character in a most interesting manner. 

THE TRIPLE E, 

Just published, is a book whose provoking title will be at once acknowl- 
edged by the reader as an appropriate one. It fully sustains the author's 
reputation. 

ACHOR, a new book in press. 

D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers, Boston. 



New Publications. 



The Tent in the Notch. By Edward A. Rand. A 
Sequel to "Bark Cabin on Kearsarge." III. Boston: D. 
Lotlirop & Co. Price $1.00. The boys and girls who last 
year read Mr. Rand's charming book, Bark Cabin on 
Kearsarge, will hail this present volume with genuine de- 
light. It is a continuation of that story, with the same 
characters, and relates th# adventures of the Merry family 
during tlie vacation season, the camping-out place being 
chan2;ed from Kearsarge to the Notch, and the bark cabin 
giving place to a large ^ent for a summer residence. The 
location selected for the camp is a sliort distance down the 
Notch road, within easy walk of the Crawford House where 
the ladies of the family have a room, although their days 
are spent at the tent. From this point excursions are 
made in all directions, every known point of attraction being 
visited and others eagerly searched for. One day they make 
the ascent of Mt. Washington, the ladies going up by rail 
and the boys taking the Crawford bridlepath. Another 
they climb Mt. Willard to enjoy tlie magnificent panorama 
spread out below, and one day the boys take part in an ex- 
citing but unsuccessful bear hunt. The autlior has inter- 
woven with his story many of the local traditions of the 
mountains, and liis descriptions of the natural scenery of the 
region are so vivid and accurate that one who has gone over 
the same ground almost feels as if the book were a narrative 
of real occurrences. Like tlie first voluem of the series, 
The Tent in the Notch is capital reading, even for okftolks. 
To the boys and girls who expect to make the mountains a 
visit this summer, it is, aside from its interest as a story, as 
good as a guide book, and what they will learn from its 
pages will add greatly to their enjoyment. 

Over Seas: or. Here, There, and Everywhere. Ill 
Boston : D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1,00. Twenty-one bright, 
sparkling sketches of travel and sight-seeing make up the 
contents of this handsome volume, which every boy and girl 
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and whicli young readers know little about. They are full 
of instructive information, and the boy or girl who reads 
them will know a great deal more about foreign countries 
and the curious things they contain than could be gained 
from many larger and more pretentious books. The volume 
is profusely illustrated. 



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